A highly-significant middleweight fight has been locked in for March 2021.
Kevin Holland will face Derek Brunson in the main event of a UFC Fight Night event at an undetermined location on March 20, ESPN reported.
Holland will return to the cage after a stellar 2020 campaign that saw him secure five victories from five fights. The 28-year-old defeated Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza, Charlie Ontiveros, Darren Stewart, Joaquin Buckley, and Anthony Hernandez in the last seven months of 2020.
Brunson enters on a three-fight win streak and has not experienced defeat since he faced current champion Israel Adesanya in November 2018. With wins against Edmen Shahbazyan, Ian Heinisch, and Elias Theodorou, Brunson is enjoying his best run since 2014-16.
In a video posted to The Body Lock’s YouTube channel, Patrick Auger and Matthew Wells discussed the Holland vs. Brunson announcement and shared their predictions for the fight.
Wells says that the timing is right for this one. He believes that if this was an earlier version of Brunson, he’d be picking Holland to win easily. But Brunson has improved and has a different approach now. Meanwhile, Holland is tearing through everybody and is coming off one of the craziest knockouts of the year. He’s leaning Holland in what should be a very competitive fight.
Auger agrees that this fight makes all the sense in the world. He comments on how Brunson has seemingly reinvented himself and the new version looks great. Auger says that Brunson looked so good against Edmen Shahbazyan that he’s going to be picking Brunson to get the win in March.