Kevin Holland takes aim at Israel Adesanya: “Just some guy who can’t stop running backwards and getting clipped”

Kevin Holland has taken aim at Israel Adesanya.

Holland is set to return to the middleweight division when he takes on Roman Dolidze at UFC 307. Should Holland win, he could be in line for a big fight at 185lbs next time out. One potential opponent could be Israel Adesanya, however, ‘Trailblazer’ doesn’t have much interest in that fight.

Instead, Kevin Holland believes Israel Adesanya is now boring and he would just run away from him.

“Not really. It would have been exciting beating him as the champ. Now he’s just some guy who can’t stop running backwards and getting clipped and throwing a lot of leg kicks. At the end of the day, guys fighting like that, they play the chess match where they’re just doing (leg kicks) all night. It’s like, that’s boring,” Holland said to ESPN.

Although Holland isn’t interested in the bout, it does make sense as both are big names and would be a big fight.

Kevin Holland would rather fight Paulo Costa next

Yet, Kevin Holland says he would rather face Paulo Costa instead of Israel Adesanya. Holland says it would be a fun fight for the fans as Costa is someone who wants to fight and not Adesanya who looks to run away all the time.

“I’d rather fight Paulo Costa than fight Izzy because at least Paulo’s going to actually come out there and fight, when he actually wants to fight. Izzy is going to go out there and (throw leg kicks) all night, and I ain’t got time for that. I mean, if he wants to scrap, we can scrap. It doesn’t matter who it is. We can figure out something.”

Kevin Holland is 26-11 and one NC as a pro and coming off a submission win over Michal Oleksiejczuk. Before that, he suffered back-to-back decision losses to Michael Page and Jack Della Maddalena.