It looks like Max Holloway and Charles Oliveira might be gearing up for a rematch that’s over a decade in the making, but this time with the BMF title on the line. They are both former UFC world champions in their respective weight classes and with Holloway currently holding the BMF belt, there’s a lot of storylines coming into this potential fight. The main appeal would be to finally get a satisfying conclusion to the fight between them, as their first fight in 2015 ended in a freak accident. They only fought for a little over 90 seconds before a takedown attempt by Oliveira caused an injury to his esophagus, and the fight was waved off.
Holloway was declared the winner by TKO due to an injury, but that was obviously not the way he wanted to win the fight. For Oliveira’s part, he clearly would have wanted to have a full fight against Holloway too. The fight was largely forgotten about and would have remained just an interesting footnote in UFC history, but the idea of a rematch has started to float around. It only come about because of Oliveira’s public challenge after submitting Mateusz Gamrot at UFC Rio, but Holloway has been very quick to answer the call:
“I’m interested… Why wouldn’t I be? We heard the callout. I’m here. Only time will tell now… A fight at the White House? That’s such a long wait. I don’t know if I want to wait that long, but we’ll see what happens. Never say never.”
The only sticking point between them seems to be the date at the moment, but the location might be up for debate too. Oliveira wants to take part in a stadium show in Brazil if he can encourage the UFC to set it up, but America seems the most likely scenario. According to Holloway, the fight could be very soon indeed:
“We’ve been talking about this fight. Me and him have a history. He’s blaming it on some type of injury. I guess we get to figure it out now. My hand is getting better; we’re just waiting to get cleared.”
The original callout from Charles Oliveira where he challenged Max Holloway to a fight for the BMF title was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of the UFC:
