Former Strikeforce champion Josh Thomson shared his opinion on the fight between Max Holloway and Yair Rodriguez.
“This fight turned out so great because Yair started hitting lowkicks in the calf from the very beginning,” Thomson said on the Weighing In podcast. — It set its momentum from the very first seconds. Max is no longer the same fighter when he needs to go southpaw. He can combine from this stance as well, but he doesn’t have the confidence of being right-handed. Guys with a style like Max will always have problems with good lowkickers. Yair took what worked for Alexander Volkanovskiy and applied it from the very beginning of the fight. Although, to be honest, everyone will have problems with Yair. Imagine if he didn’t have that downtime, what progress he could make. He could be a champion.
His kicks are so strong and fast, he doesn’t even rotate his hip to kick. The way he ties things up on the beat, no one else does. His elbows from the bottom up are something special. And how he hit Max with this kick, it’s not even a “peal of thunder”, because with a “peal of thunder” they hit with his heel, and he hit with his foot. And Yair’s stamina, his chin is also fine. It seems to me that Yair won the 2nd and 5th rounds, the first was close, the 3rd and 4th – for Max.
The speed of Yair’s kicks was so high that Max had no chance of catching his leg, and then he began to do these pushes with his hands. I really liked it – a good adaptation. As soon as Max saw that the kick was preparing, he pushed Yair with his hands on the shoulder and he lost his balance. Because of this push, Yair then began to lean back before the kick and collapsed.
On November 13, Holloway defeated Rodriguez via unanimous decision at UFC Vegas 42.
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