Holly Holm is the newly crowned UFC women’s bantamweight champion and like most champions she’s itching to step back into the octagon to defend her title. The problem is that Dana White has promised former champion Ronda Rousey an immediate rematch.
White has said that the rematch is tentatively scheduled for July 2016 and that’d mean that a healthy Holly Holm wouldn’t compete for another 8 months.
“Eight months between fights is a long time,” Holm said. “Maybe not for some, but in boxing I used to fight four times a year for title fights. I was very active. This year is three fights in a year. I still feel like it’s active. To go eight months without one, we’re not even averaging two a year at that rate. So it’s kind of like, man that’s a really long time from now.”
The longer layoff definitely benefits Rousey. She needs that time to recover both mentally and physically from the beating she took from Holm in November, but while Ronda gets better Holm doesn’t.
“I’ll keep training hard,” Holm said. “I still want to go to the gym. I don’t have to have a fight in front of me to be motivated to train. I want to train. But it’s a lot more exciting to train when you have a fight coming and we’re in this sport because we love to fight. When you don’t have a fight for a while, it kind of takes away what you’re shooting for. But whatever comes is whatever I’m gonna deal with.”
It’s easy to blame Dana White. There are a lot of arrows pointing toward him giving his BFF Ronda Rousey the best chance at recapturing her title. Holm could be rusty, she fought 3x last year, or Ronda could simply have used the added time to dissect Holly’s original game plan.
A tune up fight for Holm in the spring would do wonders for her confidence as a champion and with Ronda’s work rate the past 2 years, nearly 4 fights a year, it’ll be hard to justify keeping Holly on the shelf.
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