“It’s kind of weird because there’s Ilia Topuria, Giga Chikadze, they’re both Georgians, good friends of Merab,” the American told RAW Talk. “There’s also Max Holloway, Kelvin Kattar, Arnold Allen, Yair Rodriguez, Brian Ortega, and we’re friends with all those guys, so I don’t even know how to fight them.”
“If I go up, the most interesting opponent for me, considering I won’t get a title shot, would be Max Holloway. That fight will definitely get the fans’ attention, like, ‘Wow, he’s going to fight Max!’ I trained with him a few times when I was in Hawaii. He’s a big guy, very tall, just like Sean O’Malley, and a great puncher too.”
On August 19 at UFC 292 in Boston, Aljamain Sterling lost the UFC flyweight championship belt by second-round technical knockout to Sean O’Malley, and Max Holloway closed out his third loss to Alexander Volkanovski with two wins, winning by unanimous decision over Arnold Allen and knocking out Korean Zombie.