It went as you’d expect: Holland fought valiantly for the first minute and a half of his bout, but ended up with a D’arce choke that forced him to tap out 2:13 into the first round (see highlights here). Kevin Holland came into his new fight with realistic expectations, and that was reflected in his statement after the loss. “Son. Children. I lost an amazing fight match last night — I mean fight,” he said in an Instagram video. “My goodness, Chimaev is one hell of an athlete. I’ll keep talking because you know who I am.” “I hate to end the year like this so I would love to go there against a striker. I don’t know if I deserve another Wonderboy match. I would love a Wonderboy match! But if it wasn’t a Wonderboy, D-Rod match, we were ready to do it. We had to change it to save the card so maybe we can get something good and do it and collect another check before the end of the year.” Holland was certainly happy with his pay raise for being part of the six-man switch to save UFC 279. After agreeing to fight Chimaev on a day’s notice, his agent released a video of him doing the “Big Mouth” dance. “Bags upon bags for this man, Kevin Holland,” wrote Oren Hodak, head of KO Reps. “The man knows his worth and the UFC came to play. The agreement is now official.” Of course, we’ll never know how much money the UFC had to pay to line it all up. Dana White declined to answer questions about pay raises for the UFC 279 team of heroes, saying simply “These guys all have deals. Everyone has an agreement.” Nate Diaz sure had a deal. And the deal Kevin Holland got for accepting the Khamzat Chimaev fight was also apparently pretty sweet. Now hopefully they throw him a striker for his next fight to compensate for his “Borz” clash.
