“I started off a loser,” said the Alabama native. “Before ever fighting, before ever playing high school football or college football, I was just a shy loser who didn’t have many friends, who didn’t want to go outside and didn’t want to experience anything. I just wanted to hide behind my video game and hide from people’s opinions. It took a lot for me to have to come out of that shell and realize that I had things that could benefit me as a person, like athletically, and things I was gifted with that some people have to work for. So I just think experiencing that alone helped me realize that I could continue to get better, even now, getting to the highest level.”
A 6-foot-4 defensive lineman for Arkansas Tech University, Holmes ultimately turned to jiu-jitsu, then MMA, where he lost his pro debut in March 2019 to Jordan Newman. In a sport like boxing, that could be a death sentence for your career if you’re not named Bernard Hopkins. But in MMA, Holmes knew he wasn’t destined to be a B-side forever and, coupled with some coaching that took him off his game in the fight, he shook off that defeat and moved forward.
“When I lost that fight, I did a lot of things different than I normally do,” said Holmes of his first pro bout. “And also, I had like fear in my heart going into that fight of my opponent, and it was because of a coach that I brought into my team at the time. He had a wrestling background, so he knew of my opponent from the wrestling scene, so he put fear into me, like, ‘Oh, you can’t let him take you down,’ you can’t let him do this, you can’t let him do that.
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Less than four months later, Holmes was back in action and he scored a second-round submission win over Kona Oliveira. Two more wins followed, and Holmes entered 2021 with a 3-1 record and some lofty ambitions for the year.“And that’s something that I hadn’t experienced before until that fight, and it made me hesitant and made me doubt myself. I knew immediately after the fight was over that he won, but I wasn’t hurt, and I wasn’t defeated or anything like that. I was disappointed that I did hesitate, but I knew why, and I just got back to training and fixed my mistake. Okay, if he’s a better grappler, I need to become a better grappler.”
“The whole goal was to get into the UFC from the type of year that I could have,” he said. “And I pretty much did that. I had four fights, four finishes, and that was my goal – do that and I’ll get into the UFC. So, I guess one word I could use to describe the year was ‘perfect.’ It was what I was supposed to do, I did it, and now I got the end result I was looking for, so I need to have another year just like that.”
