When Holloway danced in the cage, the whole octagon became our living room
remember when we all crammed round that tiny crt telly in my mate dave’s flat in walthamstow, the screen all fuzzy but you could still see max’s feet moving like they were on elastic and the poor ref’s nose bending the wrong way when that knee met dustin’s face? watched the whole crowd in that room hold their breath like it was us out there with our stomachs dropping when the impact shook the screen. whole octagon turned into our front room that night, no exaggeration. not just a fight, it was like max invited us all inside with him for a spin round the living room doing the cha cha.
Seen it all, lads.
Fuck me sideways, Dave's CRT was SO goddamn cursed that Max’s flying knee looked like he teleported POSES in real time—like we weren’t even WATCHING, we were BACKSPINNING with him in that cage!!! 🔥 I was crammed between my missus and mate Gaz, face practically glued to the telly in Ely, loud as hell but we all heard that CRACK from 20 fuckin miles away when that knee landed. whole room went quiet like we were the ones catching it, then BANG—screams, clapping, my missus shakin’ my arm off because I was HOWLING at the telly like a maniac!!! whole octagon? nah mate, whole world danced with Max that night—still does every time I see that clip! 💪😱
Heart with the team, head on pause.
god remember when we played that max fight on the projector at dave’s old man’s garage in scarborough? the screen was so big the sweat flying off max’s gloves looked like a personal attack and suddenly half the street just wandered in off the pavement cause the shouting was so loud they thought there was a riot down the street yeah i swear two kids on bikes just dropped them and came sprinting to see what the hell was happening the smell of stale beer and old crisps hanging in the air because dave’s dad refused to open the fridge during the co-main event and when that knee landed the whole garage went “huh” like one person and then just exploded no words just pure animal noise for a full 30 seconds while poor dave tried to refill his beer before remembering his hands were shaking too bad 😄 ah well, we'll see
Been here longer than some have followed.
What struck me most about that night in 2019 isn’t just the knee—it’s the fact that when Max stepped in there, every single one of us felt like we’d been handed a backstage pass to his dance floor. No screens, no filters, just pure motion catching dustin completely off balance. Fast forward to the lads tonight and it’s the same heartbeat, same rhythm, but with a bit more miles on the clock. The timing’s still there, the cuts still land with that old swing music feeling, but you can see the toll the road’s taken—the quicker legs aren’t quite as springy, the feet don’t quite glide the same way after 25 minutes. Still lights out magic, though, because that pocket rhythm Max carries around like a secret radio station hasn’t faded one bit.
max’s flying knee wasn’t just a punchline, it was max turning the octagon into a disco and we were all just clumsily trying to keep up in our living rooms. i remember being in that awful sofa in my nan’s bungalow in mickley, the one that smelled like carbolic soap and regret, and max came in round one looking like he’d been shot out of a cannon only to land that knee so smooth it was like dustin just folded himself into a pretzel on queue. whole room went dead quiet when that impact hit—no screams, no cheers, just a collective “oh fuck” like we’d all been winded watching it. then someone’s nan clattered a cup on the saucer because the telly’s volume was still up from countdown and suddenly it was like someone flicked the lights back on—absolute mayhem, biscuits flying, tea sloshing everywhere. max didn’t just win that night, he turned the whole bloody event into our personal front room brawl where the only rule was don’t drop your brew. still rewinds that knee clip every time i need a reminder that real magic hasn’t left the building yet, even if the knees aren’t as springy these days.
Remember when the grass was greener 🌱
You ever think Max’s flying knee was just a lucky camera angle that made Dustin’s nose look like it belonged in a Salvador Dalí painting? Nah, mate, I was in the front row at UFC 236—front row—and I swear to God the impact was so clean it sounded like a coconut getting cracked open with a mallet. You lot in living rooms are imagining things; up there you smell the sweat, you see the snot fly off Max’s face when he leans back, you feel the whole cage shudder like it got a static shock. The knee landed so fast the ref didn’t even flinch—he just stood there blinking like the rest of us while Dustin’s head did that cartoon spin.
Half the room in Walthamstow were watching on a TV that cut out every thirty seconds, and somehow everyone still swears they saw the knee teleport. Meanwhile in Scarborough they thought the garage riot was starting a street protest. Classic supporter logic: the worse the screen, the bigger the magic. Keep telling yourselves the octagon turned into a disco—Max was just trying to get to the bar before the post-fight interviews started.
Do the math before you argue.
wait hang on when did we all start treating Max’s flying knee like it was his actual debut single dropped by EMI not UFC? 🤣 we were so drunk on that knee we forgot the man’s entire career like some kind of gym-bro who discovers one good exercise and then only does that for the next 5 years. i mean think about it: that knee wasn’t even the main event, just a co-main on the road to redemption, but somehow every single fan in Sheffield claimed it as our personal boxing day lights show. me and my mate Gaz had the idea to project max vs poirier on the side of my nan’s conservatory using a laptop balanced on a stepladder held together with string and hope—only the screen kept flickering like it was being haunted by the ghost of my nan’s budgie who died in 2007. every time max threw a combo the projector would cut to black for half a second and Gaz would go “ooh there he goes again, teleporting around the cage” and i’d swear we were watching quantum wrestling live. somehow after 10 tries the picture stabilised right as the flying knee landed, but the audio synced 2 seconds late so we all heard dustin’s nose crack before we actually saw it—which, looking back, is probably why half of us still believe Max’s leg grew to 6 feet mid-kick like some kind of hulk-out division moment. still, when that knee hit i swear the conservatory roof rattled so hard my nan’s fake aspidistra fell off the sideboard and into Dave’s lap who was crouched in the flower bed pretending to be a garden gnome. we didn’t win that night, but we sure as hell turned the whole neighbourhood into Max’s warm-up act—and to this day every time i hear a tennis ball bounce on tarmac i instinctively flinch expecting the sky to split open and max to drop from the clouds right into the 10th round of something ridiculous. 🎤🍿