Kevin Holland feels like ‘piece of sh*t,’ but coach confident

Kevin Holland admits his UFC 307 loss stings – literally and figuratively.

Shortly after his TKO defeat due to injury, Holland (26-12 MMA, 13-9 UFC) posted a short statement on Instagram with a screenshot of a critical and insulting direct message he received from one viewer of the fight.

“Can’t have a response to everyone but yeah I feel like a total piece of sh*t,” Holland wrote. “My bad to all the one [sic] who put some bread on the line or told they friend I was gonna win. Ima p*ssy.”

Holland suffered what appeared to be a rib injury late in Round 1 while he was grappling in his main card bout vs. Roman Dolidze (14-3 MMA, 8-3 UFC). Holland made it to the end of the round but clutched his side as he rose to his feet.

Ultimately, Holland’s coach Bob Perez determined his fighter was not in sufficient enough physical condition to continue and signaled to the referee the fight should be called off.

“We took the L last night,” Perez wrote on Instagram on Sunday. “Rib injury while escaping. Could not continue. I called the fight. It sucks, but was the right thing to do. Thank you for the love.”

The extent of the injury is not publicly known, though Holland still appeared to be in severe pain in a post-fight video of him squashing beef with rival Joaquin Buckley.

Saturday was not the first time Holland was rendered unable to continue during a fight, according to Perez’s assessment. In December 2022, Holland severely broke his hand in a fight vs. Stephen Thompson, which lead Perez to make the same call.

“I’ve had fighters say, ‘Coach, I’ll kill you if you ever stop a fight.’ I’m like, ‘Well, you’re going to have to kill me,’” Perez told MMA Junkie in the days after the Thompson fight in December 2022. “… My point that I’m getting to is I’d rather have Kevin mad at me for a bit, than him hating me for the rest of his life or his family hating me. God forbid something terrible, terrible, terrible were to happen, I wouldn’t want to hate myself.”

For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 307.