5 Things You Might Not Know About Kevin Holland

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Momentum can be fickle, but Kevin Holland currently wields as much of it as anyone in the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s middleweight division.

Having climbed into the Top 10 at 185 pounds, the Dana White’s Contender Series graduate will attempt to accelerate his rise when he faces Derek Brunson in the UFC on ESPN 21 headliner this Saturday at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas. Holland, 28, has rattled off five straight wins since he submitted to a rear-naked choke from Brendan Allen some 17 months ago. “The Trailblazer” last appeared at UFC 256, where he punched out former Strikeforce champion Ronaldo Souza in the first round of their Dec. 12 pairing.

As Holland prepares for his high-stakes battle with Brunson, here are five things you might not know about him:

1. He has championship experience.

Holland captured the Xtreme Knockout middleweight and welterweight titles in consecutive appearances. He laid claim to the XKO middleweight crown when he struck Jose Alfredo Leija into submission on Nov. 5, 2016, then captured the XKO welterweight belt when he cut down Geoff Neal with punches on Jan. 28, 2017.

2. An anytime-anyone-anywhere approach became his calling card.

The Travis Lutter-trained Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt in 2020 joined Roger Huerta and Neil Magny as the only competitors in Ultimate Fighting Championship history to post five victories in a calendar year. He went 5-0, with wins over Souza, Charlie Ontiveros, Darren Stewart, Joaquin Buckley and Anthony Hernandez—a feat made all the more impressive by the fact that the UFC saw its schedule shortened by two months due to the coronavirus pandemic.

3. He carries the potential for quick-strike offense.

Holland has 11 first-round finishes to his credit, accounting for more than half of his career win total (21). Included among them are two sub-minute stoppages, as Holland submitted Aaron Reeves in just 22 seconds at a Kickass Productions event in 2015 and wiped out the aforementioned Hernandez with knees and punches in just 39 seconds at UFC on ESPN 8 in 2020.

4. There are no red flags on his resume.

The Riverside, California, native has not yet suffered what anyone would consider to be a “bad” loss. The five men who have defeated Holland—Allen, Thiago Santos, Curtis Millender, Rafael Lovato Jr. and Ramil Mustapaev—own a combined record of 73-20. Allen was a former champion in the Legacy Fighting Alliance, and the undefeated Lovato went on to strike Bellator MMA gold.

5. He generally holds the advantage in the standup department.

Blessed with an 81-inch reach, the 6-foot-3 Holland has landed more significant strikes than all but one of his 10 opponents in the UFC. Santos outgunned him by a 69-31 margin in his UFC 227 promotional debut. In his nine outings since, Holland has outlanded his opposition by 200 such strikes. Naturally, he has gone 8-1 in those bouts, the submission loss to Allen his only misstep.