Max Holloway slams ‘ridiculous’ UFC rankings ahead of Dustin Poirier fight

Max Holloway has some issues with the official UFC rankings.

Hawaii’s Holloway is set to return to Octagon in the main event of the widely criticized UFC 318 card on July 19. It will go down in New Orleans, and his opponent will be Louisiana’s own Dustin Poirier, who is set to retire, win, lose, or draw.

While Holloway had his best UFC success at featherweight, this fight with Poirier will occur at lightweight. It will be the Hawaiian’s first lightweight fight since he officially left the featherweight division behind following a knockout loss to Ilia Topuria, who has also moved up to lightweight.

Given that Holloway has permanently left featherweight behind, he was pretty confused to himself still ranked No. 1 in the division.

He made his feelings clear in an interview with MMA Junkie.

Holloway not a fan of UFC rankings

“I don’t know what you guys are thinking keeping me No. 1 contender there,” Holloway said. “That’s kind of ridiculous. I’m not going back down to ‘45. I’m over it.

“The rankings, they’re all over the place,” Holloway added. “Even with Ilia. Soon as he announced he was coming up, they took him directly out of the damn ‘45 one. They left me at No. 1 contender. So I was like, what the hell is going on? At the end of the day, I don’t care. The rankings is cool, the rankings is fun, but how many times do we see where guys who rank at a certain position saying now I’m getting a title shot? It took me 12 fights to get an interim title fight at ‘45.”

It’s hard to argue with Holloway here.

The UFC rankings are notoriously inconsistent when it comes to what happens when a fighter changes divisions, However,  Holloway is also ranked No. 5 at lightweight, having stopped Justin Gaethje last year. That much makes sense. If he beats Poirier, he can expect to get very close to the No.1 spot in a second division.