Instead, the 27-year-old from Dallas packed his bags, picked up his lady, Kailey, and had the best summer ever. He might have even gone past the 185-pound middleweight limit.
“Yeah, I gained a little weight this summer,” Holmes laughed. “I was on off-season – I went to Hawaii, restaurant hopping out there; it was an awesome summer.”
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It was a welcome break from the grind, and one well-deserved for the middleweight prospect, who has been putting in a lot of work, first to get to the UFC, and then to bounce back from a loss to Jamie Pickett in his January debut. And after submitting Amedovski in 64 seconds, he got to exhale.
“Before my first two fights, I had took three or four back-to-back fights,” Holmes said. “When I say back-to-back, I’m talking within every 70 days I had a fight, so I definitely needed a moment to refresh my mind, refresh my hunger and that’s what that was, for sure. I trained a little bit (post-Amedovski), just to stay in the gym, mainly teaching, and I was like, it’s time to take our trip and enjoy the world and enjoy the success that we’ve had, because it hasn’t been easy. My girl stepped up in a big place in my career, as well, and I know it can’t be easy for her to deal with me cutting weight and stuff, so we both needed just to mend and bask in the ambiance, I guess you could say.”
When they returned, Holmes went back to work, and when he got matched up with Junyong Park for a Saturday bout in Las Vegas, he and Kailey began their ritual of traveling from Dallas to Kansas City, where Holmes trains with the Glory MMA crew.
Traveling. Every week. By car. Seven-and-a-half hours. Each way.
Sunday night at midnight, the pair get in the car. Kailey drives and Holmes sleeps. By the time they arrive at the gym, it’s time for Holmes’ morning training session. Late in the week, it’s back in the car and back to Dallas, where Holmes’ five-year-old son Alister is.
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“The last thing I want to do is leave my boy,” said Holmes when asked why he doesn’t just stay in Missouri for training camp. “We’re trying to make it work the best we can and I try to be the best I can for him.”
I assume Kailey must like “Uglyman Joe” a little bit. He laughs.
“We’re planning the wedding right now,” said Holmes, who is also planning for another big win on Saturday to make it two straight after a disappointing debut in which he dropped a unanimous decision to Pickett.
“I wasn’t bummed out for very long at all,” he said. “Honestly, I don’t feel like I was bummed out at all because I fought a tough guy, he taught me a lot of lessons, he taught me how I need to be training and I would have hated it if I lost to someone who wasn’t him because he was good.”
It’s a good attitude to have, especially since many fighters never recover from that first UFC loss, and some don’t even get a second shot in the big show. Holmes was going to get a second shot after wins on Dana White’s Contender Series and Dana White: Lookin’ for a Fight showcased his potential, but he had to make the most of it. And he did.
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“Right after that fight, I started talking with a therapist and started working on myself more, and if I didn’t lose to Jamie Pickett, I probably would have won, but I probably would not have won that way (like he did against Amedovski),” Holmes said. “It taught me a sense of urgency and it taught me how I need to be performing. We all have certain talents, but are you able to execute those talents when the pressure’s on at the moment you need to do it? And I wasn’t able to do that against Jamie, because even going back and watching the fight, I seen I had a lot of success against him. I had a lot of moments when I landed strikes and I was just doing work against that skilled guy. But even in those moments, my body language was terrible. I was cut up and bruised up, but I’m also hunched over, mouth breathing, and just making it look a lot worse than it actually was. Without that fight with Jamie, I wouldn’t have learned that lesson. So when I came in with Amedovski, the big thing with me was I just wanted to be my most confident self and I wanted to be present in that moment.”
The next moment is on Saturday in the same Octagon at the APEX where he won his last fight. And though the focus is on the present, he never forgets the past and what it took to get here.
“Early on, the only way I got good enough to do this was I had to make sacrifices,” Holmes explains. “I had to sacrifice time with my kid, I had to spend all day long at the gym, I sacrificed having money and being able to do things. For a long time, I was just like a broke kid training all day, going to my coach’s house after morning training to eat lunch there and get back to the gym to teach classes for practically nothing, then train after that for just like 150-200 bucks a month. But because I was doing that, I was dominating in fights, I was building connections with people who were potentially going to sponsor me through this and help me live this life. So in my head, I still have to make sure I’m sacrificing.”
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And each step of the way, with each sacrifice, a mantra plays in his head.
“There’s no way he’s doing this. He’s not going the extra mile like I am.”
