“I don’t want to be underneath his skin when I beat him. I want to beat the very best Marvin Vettori I can get,” the middleweight said. “So if he whimpers and he worries away from the things that I say, and if it bothers him during the fight, that’s on him. But I’ll leave him all week to do what he wants to do, and then when it comes down to the night of the fight, we’ll get really active.”
While he said the only thing that intrigues him about this matchup is Vettori being “a boy playing a man’s game,” you can tell by his body language that Holland is ready to set the record straight with those who doubt his skill because of his loquacious approach to mental warfare, a tactic that has earned him the pseudonym of “Big Mouth.”
“Big Mouth was created through the media. Trailblazer gives you the knockouts, Big Mouth gives you a little bit of talking,” Holland said. “I have plenty of different personalities. It’s no big deal. I care less about what they say now and just care more about what I have to do.”
Luckily, what he has to do is something he’s become pretty familiar with: find a way to fight through the takedown attempts and grappling that Vettori will likely bring to the table.
“I expect him to go out there and believe he’s a good striker, and then once he feels what I have to offer, I expect him to do the same thing that Derek Brunson did: shoot like his life depends on it,” Holland said.
