Holly Holm: I Feel Like I Can Compete With The Best, But There’s Still A Lot To Do

Former 19-time women’s boxing champion Holly Holm has taken the sport of MMA by storm since making the transition to the cage in early 2011. Racking up a spotless 6-0 record with five knockout finishes, Holm has put herself on the very short list of legitimate contenders to UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey’s throne.

While Holm is slated to face Juliana Werner for the inaugural Legacy FC women’s bantamweight championship on April 5, she can’t help but look ahead to the prospect of a potentially huge title fight with “Rowdy,” touching on the subject in an interview with USA TODAY Sports:

“You know, I hope that that can happen and I really look forward to fighting her. I definitely feel like my MMA career is on a fast track, which I think is great. I figure if you’re not going to challenge yourself, then why be in here? If you don’t want to be the best, then why are you doing this?

So, for me, it’s like, yeah, I want to be the best, I want to fight the best, I want to challenge myself. So, hopefully I’m taking the right steps to get there, and really my job is just to learn here in practice so that I can get better so that I can feel ready and confident for a fight with Ronda (and a lot of those girls, you know).” – via MMA Junkie

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Holm’s area of expertise obviously lies in her striking, while Olympic bronze medalist judoka Rousey is the exact opposite, having finished all but one of her opponents with her vaunted armbar. It’s clear that Holm still has great progress to make in terms of mat skills before she can contend with Rousey. She feels like she can already compete with the best, but there is also still much to learn in MMA:

“You know, I feel like I could compete with a lot of the girls, but even in boxing that I did for so long, I never felt like I was great or perfect; I always wanted to perfect things. So I don’t know if I’ll ever feel like I’ve made it.

If I get to the point where I feel like I’ve made it, I should retire, because there’s always something to learn and always something to get better at, and I feel like this sport is always evolving and these girls are getting better, so I constantly want to get better. I’m confident in myself that I can compete, but I want to be that much better, so I feel like I have a lot to do.”

It sounds like Holm has a solid attitude regarding her rise to the top of women’s MMA. “The Preacher’s Daughter’s” hype train is rolling faster than that of most female fighters right now, but roadblocks still remain in her road to fighting the dominant Rousey for the belt. Still, Holm closed out the interview by saying she can make up her own mind on where she goes next:

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“I’m very free to make my own decisions, even as of right now.”

With a supposedly shocking announcement regarding Rousey’s next fight on the horizon, could Holm be slated as “Rowdy’s” next challenge in the Octagon?