ROF 40 Backlash Updates

And then you have Chris ‘The Hammer’ Holland.

On Sunday it was Holland that MMA.CLVR.TV was looking for at the Ground Zero MMA media day, his home gym. Ground Zero isn’t easy to find, and if you don’t know what you’re looking for, a small gym in a warehouse district lying in the shadow of Colorado Heights University, you will miss it. In that way, Chris Holland and his gym are the same.

The media day was attended by exactly one outlet, MMA.CLVR.TV, a point Nate Johnson, coach, teammate and part-owner of the gym (along with partner John Maldonado), was eager to talk about.

“We’re used to being ignored. You know who we are? We’re the place Rocky worked out at during Rocky III. Remember how the Russian was hooked up to all the machines, and Rocky was just running in snow? Grudge is the Russian gym [laughing], remember who won that fight?” Johnson said, smiling as he stood under an American flag that hangs above the wrestling mats.

He is half serious, but not in the way you would think. He does believe there is a villain in this main event,  but not a lumbering barely intelligible Drago; but one that Ring of Fire has created.

“They want Chris to be the villain, they need him to be the bad guy. He keeps knocking out their favorites. He beats the promoter’s friends, Williamson, Lopez, and now they want to fix all that by having Thatch beat Chris,” Johnson said.

It is pretty frequent that we hear a coach or a fighter talk about being the underdog, or being the bad-guy in the hopes of pumping themselves and their fan base up, however in this case, it may just be true.

At the Ring of Fire event where Holland knocked out Lopez for instance, the crowd was so staunchly anti-Holland that when the first round KO happened, it wasn’t so much that they booed his victory, as they screamed at it. They didn’t hate Holland, they just loved Lopez.

And no one is more loved in the Colorado MMA community than Brandon Thatch.

But that didn’t stop Chris Holland from cracking a wide grin on Sunday as he spoke to us.

“Are you kidding me? I’m the main event at Ring of Fire! This is my UFC. If I think about it too much, I start to not believe anymore,” Holland said standing near a weight bench that he had just a moment earlier been doing reps on. He had arrived at the media day quietly, toting his young daughter and a dog that couldn’t weigh more than ten pounds. It was a comical image. This devastating force of nature in the ring, with fists the size of hams and shoulders that are currently holding the entire collective future of Ground Zero MMA on them, was as relaxed as could be.

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(above Chris Holland wins at ROF 38)