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Max Holloway urged young combat sports athletes to take brain health seriously and shared his thoughts on the potential impact of sustaining damage in MMA.
Holloway is set to challenge Ilia Topuria for the featherweight title in the UFC 308 main event on Oct. 26. During the Media Day interaction, the 32-year-old was asked to advise young athletes. Holloway replied:
"Take care of you guys' brains. Try and find out more about brain health, learn about brain health, and do the right things. You only get one brain, guys! Once that thing starts deteriorating, it's not like anything else where you can grow it back.
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"So be smart, go see specialists, go see doctors, go do research on your own brain health, and take care of yourself. Because at the end of the day, I don't want to be a vegetable when I grow older."
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The Hawaiian fighter is known for his ability to take a shot and holds the record for absorbing the most number of significant strikes (2,223) in UFC history. While he has never been knocked out or knocked down, many have raised concerns over the long-term impact of these wars on his health. Continuing further, Holloway said:
"Everybody keeps talking to me about, 'Oh, how many times you get hit' and blah, blah... Brother, I take brain health so seriously, people will never know. After my career [concludes], maybe I'll talk about it and all the stuff we've been doing. But take care of you guys' brains, do your homework, get on it, and be smart."
Check out Max Holloway's comments below (17:30):
When Max Holloway shared how his training methods helped him preserve his brain health
While Max Holloway has been through some grueling wars throughout his UFC career, he has employed smart training methods to help him stay healthy. During a 2022 interview with Luke Thomas, Holloway said that he eliminated gym wars and hard sparring sessions from his training a few years ago. He explained:
"You guys see me in these wars, right? You guys must be thinking, 'Oh, if he's having wars here, he's probably [taking a lot of damage in the training as well]...' I don't have no wars in the gym. I do no sparring. I don't get my head hit in anything on purpose.
"I don't spar anymore, we don't do hard rounds. Everything is just much more smarter. We do a little bit of motion stuff, but we're not cracking each other."
Check out Max Holloway's comments below (25:35):
