Mike Malott doesn’t feel like the low shots landed to Kevin Holland were of a damaging magnitude that the latter presented it to be. Appearing on The Ariel Helwani Show, the Canadian combatant discussed several subjects in the fall out of his big win on home spoil.
Malott was the partisan favorite at UFC Vancouver and emerged with a win over a tenured UFC vet in Holland but the victory did not come without a touch of controversy attached to it. Low blows took place throughout the bout with Holland being on the receiving end of the errant shots with some detractors describing Malott as a dirty fighter in the wake of those illegal strikes.
When touching on those aforementioned elements of what happened in the British Columbia-based co-main event, Malott said,
It definitely wasn’t the groin shot that it was acted out to be. There might have been a brushing of the cup, but I mostly hit him in the belt line, hip area.
I was a little bit frustrated with it especially afterwards. It wasn’t a bad groin shot. I think he really wanted a point deducted and I think there was a little bit of embellishment there.
Mike Malott and Kevin Holland’s tense post-fight exchange at UFC Vancouver
Mike Malott and Kevin Holland fought things out in the confines of the cage. But there was a certain level of interacting after their clash following the debacle with the low blows and the officiating oversights some saw in how that was all handled. During the embedded interview above with Helwani, Malott mentioned that he went to apologize to Holland backstage but that the gesture was not accepted.
As the surging welterweight touched on the fact that he was sorry about the unintentional low strikes, Malott mentioned Holland responded by describing that as cheap. Mike Malott also mentioned that the UFC Canada cameras were following him and captured an instance of Holland stating how he could not respect Malott going forward after what had just transpired.
