Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson knew he had a fight coming up at the UFC Orlando Main Event, but it was probably the first time he’d actually had a conversation with his opponent mid-fight.
Against the ever-chatty Kevin Holland, the two-time UFC title challenger barely stood a chance to throw his first few combinations before they spoke while also trying to pull off an emphatic knockout.
According to Thompson, he and Holland agreed that they would engage in a hitting fight, and each kept that promise — at least in the early stages of the fight.
“It was one of those unwritten rules that we had going into this fight,” Thompson explained at the UFC Orlando post-fight press conference. “I know later that he shot, he had a broken hand, but I think I fell on the first lap and he put me back up.
“He told me on the first lap, ‘I’m not taking you down.’ All right, sounds good to me. It was kind of like one of those handshakes that we had in the first round, nobody would go down.”
That changed after Thompson really started teeing off against Holland, including several spin kicks that blew up the Contender series veteran, who simply refused to go down.
“In the end he started shooting [for takedowns], and I said, ‘Hey, I thought you weren’t going to shoot!'” Thompson said. “And he said, ‘I have to do what I have to do.'”
As the fight progressed past the first round, Thompson began to connect, throwing lightning-fast combinations and a barrage of punches and kicks that repeatedly caught Holland off guard.
While Holland showed incredible stamina absorbing Thompson’s best punches, he actually questioned if the 39-year veteran might consider taking his finger off the fast-forward button.
When Thompson inevitably hit Holland anyway, he immediately apologized.
“He was telling me to slow down and I was telling him I was sorry the whole time,” Thompson revealed. “He said, ‘You got me good,’ I was like, ‘I’m sorry, man!’ It was fun. He’s hilarious.”
In a moment seemingly escaping referee Dan Miragliotta, who never stopped the contest for an accidental heads-to-head collision, Thompson said Holland took it upon himself to stop what he was doing to make sure they were both okay.
“Whenever we would butt heads, he would be like, ‘Oh man, I’m sorry,’ and I would be like, ‘No man, it’s okay, keep fighting, keep fighting,'” Thompson said. “We had some fun conversations there.
“We wouldn’t have put on a good show without him. I appreciate Kevin.”
The fight was eventually stopped after Holland’s trainers waved the fight off at the end of the fourth round, giving Wonderboy the win. The performance got Thompson back on track after back-to-back losses to Gilbert Burns and Belal Muhammad in his previous games.
As for what’s next, Thompson didn’t name anyone he was looking for a fight to fight, although he definitely likes the idea of facing another opponent with a similar discipline to Holland.
“If you guys want more fights like this, give me a forward,” Thompson said. “Give me a striker. Of course I’m always looking for the title and it’s always at the top of the list, but why not have some fun fights with it.”