UFC 308 Technical Preview: Topuria vs Holloway is MMA at its finest

The best fight that can be made in all of MMA is here and there are lots of technical details to dive into.

Finally, a Truly Great Fight

The UFC has had a really lackluster year. They’ve frequently failed to put together compelling main events for their pay-per-view shows. There have been some great fights and surprising upsets, but a truly great fight is exciting and intriguing well before the cage door shuts.

To be fair, Sean O’Malley versus Merab Dvalishvili was an incredibly important matchup that we’re only a month and a half removed from, but that served as only a brief digression from the typically mundane schedule that has characterized 2024.

Ilia Topuria’s first defense of his featherweight title against former champion, perennial top contender, and all-time great Max Holloway is a mouth-watering matchup with an uncertain outcome. We’ll need to look very closely at their recent performances to try to work our way towards understanding the most important dynamics in this fight.

Pressure Versus Pace

As usual, we need to take a look first at the directionality of the fight to understand from a broad strategic perspective how it might look. That is, we need to understand how Topuria and Holloway will look to claim and maintain space because that will set the terms of engagement.

Holloway has sometimes been mischaracterized as a committed pressure fighter. While it’s true that he does his best work on the front foot, he’s not generally looking to trap his opponents against the fence and perpetually keep them there by cutting off escapes. Rather, throughout his career he’s been more of a “pace fighter”.

There’s always debate as to how to classify the different style archetypes, but for the purposes of this discussion I’m distinguishing between fighters who want to crowd their opponents along the fence from fighters whose primary goal is just to set and keep a high pace.

This distinction is important for understanding Holloway’s late career developments, where he has often settled into an open-space kickboxing match with his opponents and has incorporated a lot more lateral movement, often even taking a pseudo-backfoot approach.

In actuality, Holloway has always had performances that lacked relentless aggression. He chose instead to outslick opponents like Jeremy Stephens and Frankie Edgar.

Now turning our focus back to the matchup with Topuria, the champ is a committed pressure fighter and while he will hop back at times to counter, his primary mode is to always be the one pressing forward. But unlike other fighters of this archetype, Topuria is very patient and methodical in his pressure.

Against Volkanovski, Topuria employed a patient pressuring approach where he worked his way inside with tight footwork, feints, and head movement.

There’s so much to praise about Topuria’s pressuring tactics. He avoids many of the gimmicks that other MMA fighters employ for closing distance and instead sticks to the fundamentals: tight footwork that maintains his stance at all times, a steady diet of feints, and proactive head movement to avoid repeatedly running into his opponent’s jab.

It will be vitally important for Ilia to employ this steady, forward movement against Max. While Max has certainly improved as a backfoot boxer, he is still at his most vulnerable when he is forced to retreat linearly.

Holloway’s defensive issues while moving backward are well known at this point. He often skips back with his head straight up instead of moving laterally behind his guard.

While the version of Justin Gaethje that Holloway felled in that epic battle at UFC 300 was not the hellbent pressure fighter of his WSOF days, he still did have success getting Holloway to back up. The problem was that Gaethje often failed to capitalize on these advantageous positions and instead threw wildly telegraphed and overcommitted punches that gave Holloway easy exits.

Gaethje had success backing Holloway to the fence, but overswinging on his punches created opportunities for Holloway to circle back to center.

It should be noted that Topuria has shown the same issues with overthrowing in earlier fights, but he seems to have mostly reigned in his wilder swings.

Against Bryce Mitchell, we saw a far less patient Topuria who overswung on many of his punches.

While we haven’t seen this quite as much from Ilia in his two most recent fights, it’s important to note that difficult fights tend to bring out old habits. Regardless of how well Topuria fights, he’s likely not going to get an easy or quick knockout against Max Holloway, one of the most durable fighters we’ve ever seen.

That means the fight could end up being the type of high-stress situation that can bring out the worst in less experienced fighters like Topuria.

Another relevant question is whether Topuria will be able to kick Max’s legs consistently. Gaethje, of course, made low kicks a big part of his strategy against Holloway and was finding considerable success with them.

Gaethje exploited Holloway’s vulnerability to low kicks early, but got away from them as Holloway started to block, avoid, and counter them.

This is another area where Topuria could learn from Gaethje’s failures. While several opponents have had success kicking Holloway’s legs, none have been able to cause enough damage to greatly diminish the Hawaiian. While Topuria has strong low kicks, more important than the damage they cause is their utility in serving his goal of pressuring.

Gaethje couldn’t use his leg kicks while he was pressuring because Holloway kept countering them, which made Gaethje start to preemptively back off after landing. Against Volkanovksi though, we saw Ilia use well-timed low kicks that cut off his opponent’s lateral movement, contributing to his ability to corral Volk to the fence.

Topuria’s low kicks can serve his larger strategic goals of pressuring his opponent to the fence and trapping them in pocket exchanges.

So far we’ve established that Holloway is vulnerable when he’s getting pushed straight back, that Topuria has the kind of sophisticated pressure that could do so, and that he can use low kicks to help him cut off Holloway’s lateral movement. But what if Max doesn’t allow himself to get pushed back?

I mentioned at the start of this section that Holloway has been less intent on being the one moving forward in his most recent fights. Perhaps that’s a product of having three fights with one of the best backfoot fighters we’ve ever seen in the sport (Volkanovksi) or perhaps it stems from a desire to take less damage as he’s approaching his 30th fight in the UFC.

And while I don’t think that Holloway is in his prime anymore and likely doesn’t have it in him to repeat the same kind of performances we saw in his two fights against Jose Aldo, he’s proven time and time again to be an incredibly smart fighter. That means we can’t entirely count out the possibility that he shows up intent on pushing Ilia back.

He actually punished lots of Gaethje’s linear retreats and even pressuring in spurts could go a long way in this fight.

Holloway blitzed forward to punish Gaethje’s poor defensive habits while retreating.

While we haven’t seen anyone have sustained success pressuring Topuria, there was one particularly troubling moment in his fight with Bryce Mitchell that could be relevant here.

The brief moment where Mitchell was able to get Topuria moving back saw the future champ lose his discipline with both his footwork and with his defense.

Topuria is certainly one of the most brilliant technicians we’ve seen in a while, but one person can’t be good at everything, especially when he only has fifteen professional bouts. He’s a fantastic boxer when he gets the type of circumstances he prefers, but it’s hard to imagine that he’ll look as slick on the backfoot as he does on the front.

We can’t forget that when Topuria showed up in the UFC, he was mostly touted as a powerful top-position grappler and submission artist. In fact, his first seven victories as a pro all came by submission. While he developed quickly into the power-punching boxer we know now, it’s highly unlikely that he has the level of depth and flexibility in his striking as Holloway does.

Topuria looked more disciplined with his defense moving backward against Josh Emmett, but Holloway’s offense is far more refined than Emmett’s. If Holloway can consistently get Topuria to retreat, it could be a long night for the Spaniard.

In the Pocket

Just to hammer home for a second just how deep this fight is, appreciate that what we’ve covered so far was just to establish which fighter will get to move forward and which one will be forced to retreat. But now we can turn our attention to what will happen when the two fighters end up in boxing range.

Holloway is a monster in the pocket, as we saw in his last second knockout of Gaethje. But when we look back at that exchange and a few earlier ones, we can see a couple areas where Topuria could present a more dangerous threat up close.

First, Gaethje was horribly undisciplined with his footwork and punch selection when he was exchanging with Max. He regularly allowed his stance to fall apart and he continued the same overswinging tendencies we saw from him earlier.

Gaethje’s overthrowing and footwork issues made him come out on the losing side of most of the pocket exchanges with Holloway.

In contrast to Gaethje’s mechanical issues, Topuria has been a very balanced and disciplined puncher in his two most recent fights. Even in his earlier fights, his moments of overzealousness were less frequent than his moments of boxing brilliance.

Still, Holloway showed vulnerabilities in his defense that have been persistent throughout his career, particularly to Gaethje’s left hook.

Gaethje had success with his left hook, especially as he started to get his jab going later in the fight, and when he followed it up with a right that wasn’t overthrown, he usually landed.

While his thunderous right hand is usually the shot that puts his opponents out cold, Topurai’s left hook still features prominently in his well-crafted combinations.

Topuria wields a powerful left hook in addition to his dangerous overhand right.

It’s true that Topuria doesn’t throw the same kind of long left hook as Gaethje and isn’t generally looking to hook off his jab. But regardless, it’s better to look at the big pictures rather than focusing on the individual strikes.

The point here is not that Topuria will have success with his left hook in an identical manner as Gaethje did, but that Holloway has vulnerabilities in his boxing defense that can be exploited by a crafty puncher.

But the champion is not perfect defensively either.

Ilia’s defense mostly on point against Emmett, but there were a few times when he allowed it to lapse while trading shots up close.

And this where I will reiterate that if Topuria finds himself in a tough fight with Holloway, which seems to be almost a given, some of these flaws we’ve seen from the past might rear their ugly heads.

To summarize what we’ve discussed in regards to the matchup in the pocket, we’ve recognized Holloway leaves openings and that Topuria presents a different challenge to other recent opponents. He’s not only very dangerous is these up-close exchanges, but he is also more sophisticated than someone like Gaethje.

But Topuria also eschews defense at times in the firefights and has never faced a fighter with as many layers of offensive depth as Holloway.

Endless Depth

We really could go on and on about different aspects of this fight, which is why it is a uniquely compelling matchup. I’ll limit my discussion here to just a few other tactical aspects that could be important.

First, the battle of the jabs is something an entire article could be written about. Both contestants possess educated lead hands that serve as the foundational pieces of their offenses. Both have also been out-jabbed by Volkanovski.

Volkanovski found considerable success jabbing and pivoting around Topuria.

The difference is that Topuria was able to eventually work his way inside of Volkanovski’s jab with his patient footwork and head movement while Holloway spent the entirety of his third fight with the Australian stuck on the outside and unable to get anything going.

Neither fighter seems equipped to duplicate the success Volkanovski had with his jab, but the key here is recognizing that whoever wins the jab battle will likely get to dictate many of the exchanges.

My read here is that it’ll probably be back and forth at jabbing range. I think both will have success using their jab on the front foot to get their combinations going and that both will have success interrupting those combinations with the jab when they’re on the defensive.

Feints will be important as well. Both fighters use them liberally, but given that Topuria is more reliant on head movement that might make it easier for Holloway to feint him out of position and punish him, much the same way he did to Aldo.

Holloway could also complicate things by switching into southpaw, which is something Volkanovski had brief success with.

Another important aspect is that both fighters are prolific body punchers and neither have really had to face an opponent who out lands them down low. Holloway made bodywork a big part of his strategy against Gaethje.

Max has always made targeting the body a main feature of his offense and Ilia hasn’t had to deal with a sustained attack to his midsection.

Josh Emmett actually had some success when he started going to the body against Topuria, but by the time he started changing levels, he was already too far behind.

This is another area where both fighters have the opportunity to find success. Topuria throws more power punches downstairs while Holloway takes a higher-volume approach, but regardless it’s exciting to see a fight between two fighters who don’t neglect the biggest target.

Just in terms of their frames, you have to imagine that Holloway as the taller fighter will be a bit more susceptible to body shots. Topuria is three inches shorter and often fights out of a crouch that further hides his body. But Holloway can make up for that with his kicks. Topuria hasn’t shown to be much of a body kicker but that’s been a consistent part of Holloway’s game throughout his career.

Speaking of kicks, we have to talk about the lone knockdown on Ilia Topuria’s record.

Ilia’s head movement is great when he needs to work his way inside, but Jai Herbert timed his dips with a head kick that sat him down.

As we saw earlier, Topuria uses a lot of proactive head movement on the outside to make his head a mobile target. But that head movement can be timed by head kicks.

It’s important to note that Jai Herbert threw a lightning-fast kick with his lead leg from a relatively close distance, meaning Topuria thought he was in boxing range and unlikely to be kicked. That’s not something we’ve seen Holloway do, but again the specific openings are less important than the larger concepts.

Holloway has utilized head kicks against shorter opponents and while Topuria will likely have the edge when it comes to low kicks, Holloway will have the advantage of being able to kick more at the body and head to keep Topuria honest on the outside.

Holloway set Volkanovski up for a closed-side head kick by first targeting his body.

But if Holloway is going to make kicks a part of his game plan, we should then discuss briefly the grappling phases of this fight. This is an area where I expect that the defense of both will neutralize any offensive attempts.

While Topuria was primarily a top-position grappler in his early MMA career, he mostly uses it selectively now, like he did in the fifth round against Josh Emmett to prevent him from making a valiant last stand.

The thing is that Holloway is incredibly hard to take down and even harder to keep there. So while if the fight gets tough it’s likely that we’ll see Topuria try to mix it up on the ground, I don’t think he’ll have much success doing so.

What is more important than the mat wrestling and BJJ is the clinch though. We haven’t seen Topuria have to battle it out in the clinch very much, but Holloway showed against Yair Rodriguez that he has an offensive clinch game that he can turn to when he’s struggling on the outside.

Max was struggling with the kicks of Yair, so he made the adjustment to attack up close in the clinch with a steady stream of knees to the body.

This is another instance where we see the considerable depth of Holloway. He’s got so many options to go to that when he found himself in a tough fight at range, he just changed phases to fight in the clinch and even grapple offensively against Yair.

Knees in the clinch and transition could be an important weapon for Holloway against his shorter opponent. First, we saw Jai Herbert have some success with a couple of knees, first after defending a takedown and second in open space, where he again timed Topuria’s head movement.

Jai Herbert landed a couple of hard knees on Topuria, taking advantage of his considerable height advantage.

Holloway could similarly use his height advantage to Herbert by punishing Topuria’s dipping head movement and attacking from underneath. Another tool for Holloway to serve that purpose is his uppercut.

Holloway can use his uppercut to catch Topuria dipping down during his entries.

Now with all these openings for different individual techniques, you can start to see how Holloway could present some real difficulties for Topuria. The fact of the matter is that despite the Spaniards incredible craft, he’s still doesn’t have as diverse or as deep of a skillset as the former champion.

The Difficult Pick