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Preview: UFC 318 ‘Holloway vs. Poirier 3’

Holland vs. Rodriguez

Welterweights

Kevin Holland (28-13, 15-10 UFC) vs. Daniel Rodriguez (19-5, 9-4 UFC)

BETTING ODDS: Holland (-395), Rodriguez (+310)

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This could be the year Holland finally gets back in a groove, and “Trailblazer” looks to continue his run of recent success in this assignment. Holland was an unlikely breakout star in 2020, proving to be a perfect fit for the UFC in the initial stages of the coronavirus pandemic. Holland’s willingness to stay active meant he stayed busy as the UFC scrambled to fill out cards, and his penchant for trash talking worked well in an otherwise quiet UFC Apex facility. Add in that Holland kept racking up wins, and hopes were high that he could announce himself as a middleweight contender heading into 2021. Instead, he wound up winless on the year. Holland’s lack of defensive wrestling ran him into a ton of trouble against Derek Brunson and Marvin Vettori, and after a no contest against Kyle Daukaus due to an accidental headbutt, he decided to ply his trade down at welterweight.

Holland continued to find some success in his new weight class, but his game seemed to regress, with him now more reliant on his massive size advantage to slug it out and overwhelm his opponents. It worked up to a point but eventually left Holland plateauing at a similar level that he found himself as a middleweight. The back half of 2024 and early parts of 2025 left Holland drifting somewhat aimlessly as he returned to 185 pounds for some inconsistent success, but he cut back down to welterweight for a March pairing with Gunnar Nelson and seems to have locked in. Holland isn’t quite as sharp as he was at his peak, but he seems to have regained enough thoughtfulness to become as dangerous as ever, staying ahead of Nelson before dispatching Vicente Luque in June. With his situation trending in a positive direction, Holland can now do some of the things for which he has become known, taking another quick turnaround against the best opponent available.



This could be rough going for Rodriguez, but “D-Rod” has done a solid job over the last year of proving he’s not done as a fighter, continuing a surprisingly successful run in the UFC. Rodriguez immediately announced himself with his UFC debut early in 2020, surprisingly finishing Tim Means in a fight where he got to show off his best weapons. At his best, Rodriguez is a crafty striker who combines violence and technique at a high level, all while keeping a sneaky amount of power into the late rounds. That led to a two-year stretch where Rodriguez was one of the highlights of the UFC’s welterweight roster, but some slippage eventually started to show—not a shock given that he was both a late comer to mixed martial arts and took a while to hit the UFC.

A 2022 fight against Jingliang Li was the flattest performance of Rodriguez’s UFC career despite a close win, and that gave way to a three-fight losing streak where his game looked limited against better competition. Rodriguez has rebounded with wins in his last two fights, including a May victory over Santiago Ponzinibbio that recaptured some of his peak form, as he gutted out some rough stretches to find a third-round knockout. Even with Rodriguez being far from done, Holland should be a tough hill to climb given his advantages in reach, youth, speed and diversity of offense. It would be nice to see this turn into a fun brawl, but the pick is Holland via first-round submission.

Continue Reading »
Holloway vs. Poirier
Kopylov vs. Costa
Holland vs. Rodriguez
Ige vs. Freire
Zellhuber vs. Johnson
The Prelims
More Fight Odds

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