“That’s the game,” he said. “You’re only as good as your last fight, really. And as high as the highs are, the lows are that low too. You can be having the best year and then be knocked out or injured or something like that and it will bring you back down. You just gotta realize that if you do something long enough, pretty much anything that could happen to you probably will. Did I want to lose that way (to Dariush)? No, but respect to him. He’s a great fighter and he landed a couple good shots that really swung the fight in his favor. But it wasn’t a bad year. A lot of people were unfortunately unable to work, but I was able to have a pretty good year.”
Now he wants to make it even better in 2021, and that can start with a win over Gamrot, a highly-touted up and comer who engaged in his own Fight of the Night in his Octagon debut against Guram Kutateladze, a bout that he lost via split decision.
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“Obviously he’s a big star over in Poland, so he’s a super fighter,” Holtzman said of Gamrot. “It’s just unfortunate that not a lot of people know him because he does only have one fight in the UFC. I thought he lost the fight (to Kutateladze); I guess you could argue that he won, but he’s a super fighter, so it’s unfortunate, but I’ve got my work cut out for me. Would I have preferred some sort of sexier matchup? Yeah, a matchup against a veteran that everybody knows, but I was out here training, I needed a fight, this is who they offered, so here I am. I’m gonna fight him and raise some hell.”
In the process of raising hell, Holtzman has laid down the gauntlet in terms of the fight he wants to deliver this weekend.
“I don’t want to wrestle all day, and I don’t think anybody wants to see that either,” he said. “So we’ll try to keep it exciting and try to put it in a spot where I think I have the best shot to win.”