UFC: Kevin Holland says Derek Brunson will always be a gatekeeper – ‘just accept what you are’
- ‘His manager needs to explain that to him, so he can stop getting fired up off this thing,’ Holland says
- ‘You’ll never make championship pay, you’ll always make gatekeeper pay. And that’s just what it is’
Saturday night’s UFC Vegas 22 main event features two surging middleweights on win streaks, but Kevin Holland insists Derek Brunson “will always be a gatekeeper”.
Holland (21-5) made a case for Fighter of the Year with five victories in a row – often on short notice – capped off with a spectacular first-round knockout of Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza (26-8) to climb up to 10th in the rankings.
No 7 Brunson (21-7), meanwhile, has rebounded from his 2018 TKO loss to the current champion Israel Adesanya with three straight wins – but “Big Mouth” isn’t giving his fellow American too much credit.
“Jacare is a bigger win than the Brunson win. Getting past Brunson is just something I have to do. But you beat Brunson, you usually go off to win a title,” Holland told SCMP MMA. “Brunson beats you, you still got a chance of getting a title.
“Brunson’s just a gatekeeper, he’s just somebody who sits in the middle and just holds the fort. He’s nobody special. He’s like the centre – you can go around it, you can go through it, he’s just f****** there. I hate to be like that, but it’s true. Sorry Brunson.
“There’s nothing he can do. If Derek Brunson was to beat everybody and then go fight Israel Adesanya again, Israel would knock him out. Therefore he would never be a title holder. If he was to go and fight Robert Whittaker again, Robert Whittaker would finish him, again.