Alexander Volkanovski vs Max Holloway II: The War Game

Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC

Introduction: A Reflection on Fights

For me, MMA is an unbelievably diversive, fascinating sport that can draw the attention of just about anyone; it’s thrilling, devastating and an attempt to celebrate as many disciplines as possible. It’s also a sport of considerable disappointments, saturated productions, and unfulfilled promises. Consequently, it becomes difficult to sometimes remember why, as spectators, we watch these sports when institutional malpractices are numerous. As someone whose knowledge of combat sports has only grown with time and chooses to write interpretive analysis on what - and more importantly, why - events in the cage happen, my investment in certain trends deepens. For what it’s worth, I think anyone can enjoy any niche or topic of their choice however the want. In my case, it seems as the years go onwards, I still retain enjoyment of incredible displays of pugilism, yet the times where MMA intrigues both the researcher and spectator in me is rare.

You also have set expectations of what to anticipate from fighters and events the more you watch. Yet, I was reminded, rather emphatically, that just because cynicism towards MMA is earned, it is not all-encompassing and does not mean that we ought to jump onboard the bandwagon and assume results before they happened.

Suffice it to say, UFC 251 made me reevaluate how I thought, not just about MMA, or even combat sports themselves, but about the analytics behind my reasoning and expectations. I was skeptical that Jose Aldo was going to perform well versus Petr Yan. He proved me wrong with one of the most incredible displays of self-awareness that I had seen. Likewise, I felt that, after a clear victory whereupon Featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski had decoded and then dissected the former champion, Max Holloway, so thoroughly that the rematch was already decided. Sure, it was probable that it would be competitive again, but what answers Holloway found were too little and too late in their first bout. In retrospect, my reasoning, despite ultimately seeming fair, ended up being dead wrong.

And I couldn’t be happier for it. To assume some conclusion was an oversight and I did genuinely underestimate how MMA, as a sport, still contains so many unknowns. For all the faults anyone can find, when the elite are challenged to show why they are elite, they will often come back and prove it. Ergo, I have since changed my perspective as to how to approach analysis. I do not instantly see a definitive conclusion as what is and what will happen. Instead, I take a step back, assess the fighters thoroughly by what they do and don’t do, then ask questions of how they can change.

Comparatively, it seemed as though Max Holloway had been figured out. Even when he attempted to grit out a victory, he was met with resistance. A rematch would likely have him meet a similar result at a more proactive length. Twice in that previous calendar year, when Holloway pushed to pull out scraps to yield rewards, he came up short. It was not like Holloway hadn’t lost before, but his best form had met opponents who could match his pace or, notably in the Volkanovski’s case, outthink him in the broader sense of a fight. I once likened Max Holloway to the runt of the litter who survived to rise to the top of the food chain. I maintain that he entered the rematch with this exact mentality in mind. He had to adapt to stay at the top and to survive being consumed by the food chain of a sport where, once you’re figured out, it’s hard to not get eaten yourself.

Thereafter, he entered this fight with strategic outliers to change what the dynamic of the fight had been. What followed was one of the single greatest displays of two-way cagefighting I’ve ever seen where, at the end, the scoring controversy feels of secondary importance to the actual quality of the contest we witnessed that night.

Before I go any further, I suggest you read my breakdown of their first bout, because I will be referring to said fight throughout.

As for this fight: Well, there’s a lot of ground to cover here.

The Stalker

First and foremost, it is necessary to discuss the last comment of my previous article:

“Alexander Volkanovski’s victory can, in part, be attributive to Max Holloway’s poor ringcraft and inability to cut the cage off effectively. Furthermore, although Volkanovski exhibits solid cage generalship and footwork, he has a number of issues in set phases of where the fight is.”

Max Holloway is a spectacular fighter on his own merits, but many of his victories came as a result of his impeccable understanding of positioning in layered exchanges. If we were to watch Holloway’s career run thoroughly, however, you would find that he did not fight a ring general who would apply control of space on the backfoot. Jose Aldo’s footwork and knowledge of the cage is the obvious exception here, yet the Brazilian’s commitment to an energy-conservative game where he could dictate and compete in the pocket still allowed Holloway to build and batter him to and against the fence. The above is, in summation, to say that Holloway is capable of cutting off opponents, but he’s more reliant upon his ability to create and eventually overwhelm in exchanges. Volkanovski was the first fighter to truly take advantage of this aspect consistently, albeit his performance still showed that it was easier said than done.

At the very least, Holloway’s ability to still create moments and read fights came later and he was able to build momentum with some offensive ringcraft. Instead of just jabbing to craft exchanges, he would feint or touch to set up body work to try and cut Volkanovski off, then use that to continue the engagements. But these attacks came too little, too late to turn the tide.

Conversely, why I ultimately cannot call Volkanovski’s performance a flawless performance is simple enough: it was a competitive fight. However, it was still an incredibly impressive one. All of Volkanovski’s work required him to be constantly active, situationally aware, and disciplined enough to punish Holloway’s tendencies and still have the energy to fight back were he to face a late surge. The fact that he can micromanage all of those things against someone as good as Holloway still makes it as impressive a win as you can find.

Volkanovski and his team probably thought their homework and payoff for the first fight was adequate with some minor changes. Unfortunately, they didn’t realize that Holloway would change the whole game on them.

Holloway’s frontfoot-heavy stance had led to him eating a number of kicks in the first bout; therefore, an upright, taller stance gave him a few benefits.

First, it allowed him a “bird’s eye view” of the range in front of him. Since Volkanovski was the shorter man, he had to close the distance or force Holloway to come to him. Here, Holloway had rationalized that he was the fighter with length. Why should he have to go to Volkanovski and get punished for it? Now, from this perch, Holloway could see Volkanovski’s entries or hip rotation for kicks easier and simply retract his lead leg without conceding any ground. Volkanovski’s kicking, as a result, lost much of its potency and freedom.

This segues into the second benefit: Holloway could still pressure with a greater handle of the fight’s initiative. Because Volkanovski is such a potent feinter, not conceding easy ground took away a lot of his threats and made Volkanovski have to be the more reactive fighter. To make ends meet, Holloway made a concerted effort to cut Volkanovski off at a distance or to push him back with kicks, knees and teeps.

Max’s dedication to a kicking game whilst taking away Volkanovski’s proved invaluable to keeping the pressure on at a distance, dealing attritive damage to the body and legs, and punishing Volkanovski for simple setups and kicks. What made Holloway’s kicking game here even more dangerous was when he mixed it up with his patented throwaways to draw reactions out and land head kicks upstairs.

‘Wait, what about Max’s lead hand?’ I’m glad you asked, because Holloway’s lead hand was reinvented. If Volkanovski’s gameplan was predicated from denying Holloway exchanges or control by denying his lead hand, then the solution was obvious: Why let all of the momentum built be through just that lead hand and still not lose utility?

Because of the range difference, Holloway could jab more freely. As a result, Volkanovski would have to try to be closer to handfight or to counterpunch. However, this was actually a trap. By taking advantage of opponent’s prior knowledge of how Holloway’s lead hand was used, Holloway was instead setting up a double-pronged tool that would still allow his lead hand to retain all its functioning and set up Volkanovski up. It was, in other words, both a “feeler” and a “feeder” to keep Volkanovski at range with varied pressure or to draw him in and punish him.

Primarily, the lead hand was an ancillary tool for the real distance weapons: the kicks and the offensive ringcraft. Holloway would bait Volkanovski into the handfight or to reposition and then set him up to the body or force the latter to retreat backwards.

What’s even more impressive is that he did all of this while scouting the weaknesses in Volkanovski’s game as well. In my previous article, I had called Volkanovski successful because “the whole [of his game] is greater than the sum of his parts,” and that when everything together was working, that was when Volkanovski was at his most potent.

I had also made the claim that Volkanovski was flawed in regards to ringcraft and his footwork. Evidently, Holloway and his team thought so too, because, even in the first fight, Volkanovski conceded the backfoot in straight lines to the cage, whereupon his primary defense was counterpunching, which saved him numerous times because he would cross his stance often.

To paraphrase a fellow analyst, the worst kind of ringcraft is where the fighter in question backs up in straight lines because they will inevitably run out of space to make their choices matter. Ergo, although Volkanovski was reliant upon his ability to draw Holloway into counters, his movement became a liability and a tool to get Holloway back into the fight. In the rematch, it became the driving force that the Hawaiian would ruthlessly exploit.

To manipulate another fighter’s movement in the cage to where you want is what it means to be an effective cage general and Holloway’s most impressive reinvention, as far as this writer is concerned, was how he became more efficient at cutting Volkanovski off and then teaching the latter lessons in positioning. In a battle of space, Holloway had created a tightrope for Volkanovski to walk. At distance, he would get backed into the fence or eaten up with kicks. If he got too close, he met Holloway’s counters full force. Volkanovski is a tremendous fighter, but his strengths and weaknesses are predicated by his ability to create mixups with clever decisionmaking. When he can’t create those moments, he is a demonstrably less effective fighter.

The threat of the knees, the constant l-steps to keep up the pressure, the work behind the lead hand, and the stance differential forces Volkanovski to get closer to kick, which allows Holloway to touch him and then crack him with a 1-2 with no place to run.

When all three tools worked in tandem as seen above, Holloway was able to get Volkanovski to the fence consistently and keep him there. Suffice it to say, it didn’t take long for the Featherweight champion to realize that at range and against the cage where the worst places he could be.

Again, the lead hand acts as both a feeler and feeder. Because of Holloway’s rapid implementations for handtraps or check hooks into jabs, he could draw Volkanovski’s guard, bait a level change out (since Alex expects Holloway to try and prolong the exchange) and Holloway takes advantage of Volkanovski’s tendency to lower his lead arm guard on his dips.

Volkanovski then ran into a new problem. Not only was it difficult to wage a ranged battle with this new iteration of Holloway, he was also being forced to get closer to find success and to nullify Holloway’s jab. Although Volkanovski had proven that he was a capable enough counterpuncher, he was the one being drawn into the proximity where he was no longer the one reacting. Ultimately, Holloway had realized that if he was the better pocket boxer and was the taller, longer man, then why was he having to do all the work pushing forward for exchanges? The moment Volkanovski looked to step-in, the former champion boxed his face off.

Not only was Holloway refusing to concede ground anymore, but he had the time to draw the Aussie in, set, plant, and threaten with level changes of his own to make Volkanovski hesitate before sending his jaw upwards. In addition, Holloway’s choice of an uppercut was the best tool he could have chosen if he was going to punish Volkanovski’s dips off of blitzes and even gave him some safety if he lost his stance and went backwards. And the most optimal punch to throw after an uppercut? A hook.

In MMA, it’s one thing to have a loss and to try again – fighters are, if anything, persistent. It’s a greater rarity for a fighter to have to ask questions about themselves and adapt to someone who has already beaten them, but versus an opponent who figured you out last time? That isn’t simply asking said fighter to do what they did, but better. It involves reflecting upon the strengths and weaknesses of your game and allocating them to actually work in different ways. All of these changes alone would not be as effective, but, in combination, Holloway had shifted the entire paradigm. The fact that Max Holloway managed to accomplish the above is a testament to how good of a fighter he is.

Another sign of a skilled pugilist is to not abandon and to modify what had worked before. The uppercuts and body kicks Holloway was using in this fight? They were discoveries he had made in the first fight. Not conceding ground and using them with other, ancillary tools made Holloway a far more effective threat than using said attacks as momentary reactions. And now it was his archrival who was walking a tightrope.

To that end, I’d like to believe the fact that Volkanovski not only chose to walk that tightrope, but made its width shorter, is indicative of how special a fighter he is too.

Throwing off the Trail

Again, I want to review a statement I had made beforehand concerning why Volkanovski is a good fighter:

“[Alexander Volkanovski] is a good fighter because he understands how he fights and has crafted a system that uses each component together.”

I want to add a slight addendum to this statement. Specifically, I consider Volkanovski a fighter who understands what he can and cannot do and executes accordingly. To that end, he may be the most systemically-competent fighter in the sport because he knows exactly what he brings to the table and his ability to build off of that with the right decisions can mask his many individual issues. And the second half of this fight is perfectly exemplative of how good he is.

Despite a narrow margin for error, Volkanovski realized still had options. Instead of thinking, “How can I get better options than these?” it was, “How can I get better options by using what I have?”

First, Volkanovski realized that because Holloway was still working at a distance, he had space to move around. The first concern was to not be cornered as little as possible. Because Volkanovski’s bladed stance didn’t lend itself well to dealing with pivoting, he used a few different tactics to consistently prevent Holloway from cutting him off.

Instead of handfighting Holloway’s lead hand, Volkanovski chose to fight both of Holloway’s hands. What was different was how Volkanovski chose to handfight Holloway’s rear hand with his lead hand and used his rear hand to occupy Holloway’s lead hand. This would allow Volkanovski to turn Holloway and force constant resets, especially when Volkanovski tightened up his footwork and realized if he could change directions, he could force Holloway to follow.

What was even more prevalent were Volkanovski’s switches. Although switching stances, especially off strikes, can make a fighter vulnerable to attacks, they can force a bit of a “break” where the other fighter has to consider their positioning. Volkanovski would often mix his switches to southpaw of his l-steps or off his strikes (usually kicks) to give himself space, but he would, at the moment of the switch, instantly began handfighting Holloway’s lead hand to draw some attention or a strike out of Holloway and then reset himself, sometimes even following up with another kick to conserve even more space. This meant he would have to take tighter or smaller steps and, subsequently, force him to up his own output, but the Aussie didn’t waver once from that task.

All of these tactics started to slowly work Volkanovski back into the fight, but they were reinforced by Volkanovski’s increasingly aggressive upper-body movement and feinting. These tools, in isolation, wouldn’t work on their own due to the mechanical flaws of the champion, but together, Volkanovski crafted another “system” to get himself back into the fight and started answering Holloway’s tactics.

To avoid Holloway’s head kicks, Volkanovski would keep his guard high at distance and lean his body weight back towards the rear leg to disperse any impact.

The counterpunching remained the greatest threat because it still concerned a range Volkanovski needed to have entries into. Instead of dipping his head as he stepped inside, he would keep his posture tall and pull back to avoid the inevitable uppercut and followup hooks.

Once he was able to establish a means of fighting the spatial battle without being punished, the featherweight champion set his attention on pressing the offense. Volkanovski had already learned that he could mess with Holloway’s sense of positioning and rhythm; ergo, he used the success he was already making to attack. Although the willingness to press forward and not concede space left him vulnerable to counters, Volkanovski maximized his rhythm manipulations to mess with Holloway’s expectations of where and when a strike was coming from.

The most prevalent tool was Volkanovski’s educated lead hand, which he would often jab off the handfight or on the counter. Sometimes he would even use a gazelle jab or hook to the body to catch Holloway as the latter reset..

Although the City Kickboxing product can be accused of crossing his feet too much, his choices of when and when not to throw a strike or even between steps played havoc on Holloway’s expectations. The caveat is that he had to never stop employing rapid amounts of feints and threats, but, because Volkanovski is the most prolific mixup specialist in MMA, he put on a masterclass with his offensive variety.

If Holloway chose to make a throwaway or noncommittal threat with his strikes, Volkanovski quickly punished or kept the pressure on him, especially on resets. Drawing out a counterpuncher’s responses is pivotal to beating them, but outpositioning them is just as important.

E.g. Volaknovski fakes a level chance, takes a small l-step, and uses it to kick Holloway (who is still resetting) to get inside. Holloway goes for the level change uppercut, but Volkanovski has level changed with him and as the former separates, lands a counter right hook.

At his absolute best, Volkanovski controlled Holloway by corralling him and then drawing him into his strikes whilst keeping the pressure on him. This didn’t entirely solve being backed up into the cage, but Volkanovski had rationalized that his best defense was his best offense - and showed how his opponent still needed to work a bit to get him into those spots again.

I won’t mince words here. What Alexander Volkanovski did to build momentum to get back into this fight is incredibly impressive. In this bout, he demonstrated that he could realign priorities and wage a layered, tactical battle against a game that was made to counter one of his own.

To be frank, the only aspect that was more impressive was the quality of fighting the final ten minutes had.

Chain of Adjustments

I suppose this section is a bit redundant; at this point, I’m just praising how good both men are. Still, it’s worth saying that, in MMA, when you really truly watch the best the sport can offer, high-level contests like this often get forgotten. For every blockbuster, blood-drenched brawl or an epic movie-scene comeback, you will hear the many, deserved accolades. Those battles are as punishing and horrific as they are inspiring. But Alexander Volkanovski vs Max Holloway II is a special fight for a different reason. It never truly becomes a war where both take an ungodly amount of damage – it’s the rarer kind of intensity: The ones where both involved are attempting to outthink another just as much as they’re trying to outfight each other. Both fighters were gritty and capable of war, but this is the fight that encapsulates both as effective strategists, tacticians and thinkers. It’s one of the most mentally demanding bouts MMA has ever seen.

Ultimately, the final two rounds showed both men’s games clashing, desperately clawing at whatever inches they could.

Because Volkanovski was looking to jab with Holloway, the latter tried to cross counter him. In response Volkanovski would pull and try to jab again. Likewise, Holloway would try to pull before he got counterjabbed.

Holloway would look to counterjab off of dropsteps, vertical steps to punish entries or after parrying and slipping Volkanovski’s punches.

Volkanovski uses his layered feinting and handfighting to start targeting the lead leg’s calf to lesson Holloway’s mobility.

Holloway adapted his counterpunching by punishing Volkanovski’s pulls by jabbing after the uppercut instead of the hook. Alternatively, he would level change to feint an entry and blitz into uppercuts to catch Volkanovski unaware.

Volkanovski would look for the body lock by drawing Holloway’s counterpunches or off of his own offense. Once there, Volkanovski would look for the inside trip.

I think these examples portray how competitive and intense this fight was by the end. And there are far more worth talking about.

There has been some speculation about Holloway being unable to build upon his successes in the later portions of the fight, when, from my perspective, the above cases give me the exact opposite indication. Not only was Holloway making effective moment-to-moment reads, he was subsequently building upon them to create layered exchanges that would favor him. I would ascertain that Volkanovski was as well. Personally, I don’t believe, given the constant adjustments and sheer competitiveness of the final two rounds, that either man was in a position to take over completely. Nonetheless, I do think these last few minutes of thrilling action lead to questions about a third fight.

Conclusion: To the Trilogy

The prospect of another contest between Alexander Volkanovski and Max Holloway is scintillating. Holloway’s strategic alterations and improved emphasis upon cagecraft and manipulation demonstrate that his team is considering how to approach the metagame strategically and to build upon their fighter’s game. As a result, he was able to make late-fight adjustments and momentum that he could not establish in their first contest. Considering Volkanovski’s team has perhaps the best strategic preparation in the entire sport, the main question becomes: How do both approach the next fight? Subsequently, what does a third contest even look like? If Holloway’s performance sets a precedent that he can prepare for a fight strategically to this extent, especially against an opponent he has already shared nearly an hour of time with, can he do so again? What if Holloway’s team was reliant upon specifically exploiting Volkanovski’s weaknesses and prior knowledge? Which fighter’s team is going to prevail in that kind of dynamic after this fight? I honestly can’t say; however, that ambiguity only adds to the intrigue.

Another intriguing consideration is a matter of how many answers both fighters may have left. If the previous section of this piece suggests anything, I would posit both still can have answers and may make gameplans around some of the successes they had towards the end. Volkanovski’s attacks to the lower calf, rhythm changes, and inside trips were giving Holloway numerous difficulties. Conversely, Holloway’s own level changes into blitzes and followup counters were consistently catching the incumbent champion off guard. There are likely many other avenues for both men and, given the sheer competitiveness of this bout, it’s hard to imagine it being one-sided. Little improvements in both men’s games since then are also worth considering, such as Holloway’s transitional offense against Yair Rodriguez or the growing refinement of Volkanovski’s neutral space game. A third bout is, for all intents and purposes, going to come down to margins.

Ultimately, Alexander Volkanovski vs Max Holloway II is among the most impressive contests I’ve had the privilege of witnessing in Mixed Martial Arts. A fight that subverts your expectations of the sport and of its fighters – even the best ones – is an extraordinary commodity. What is even more infrequent is one where both contestants come out looking better than you could have imagined and elevate each other in the process. To be honest, it is a shame that this fight isn’t remembered for how good it actually was.

I don’t know if I truly did this fight the justice I believe it deserves, but I do hope that it is remembered for the class of both the puglists involved. It was genuinely a special fight and we are privileged to see a rivalry of this caliber.