Jacobe Smith has a short-notice co-main event against Randy Brown on Saturday, and somehow Kevin Holland is still the name he can’t stop saying. Speaking to UFC on Paramount ahead of UFC Vegas 123, the undefeated welterweight pulled back the curtain on a private feud with Holland and closed with a promise that isn’t subtle: “if I see him I’m bound to smack him in his face, outside of the cage, I don’t like the dude.”
The story starts in the DMs. Smith said the two had been trading messages and “neither one of us went public about it,” until his most recent knockout, when he slid into Holland’s inbox with a simple message: “I want you next, boy.” From there it curdled.
Smith’s version goes like this. “He was talking mess but the reason why I did that was because he was wanting to fight at Noche UFC but said he couldn’t be ready for Utah,” he said, pointing out that Noche came well before Utah on the calendar. In Smith’s telling, Holland backed out anyway, then flipped the script and accused Smith of staying quiet in person while getting loud online. Smith’s response: “you’re literally describing yourself right now.” He added that he isn’t the one starting things in Holland’s messages, and that Holland is the one in his.
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He finished with a warning about who gets the last word. “If we can’t get in the cage, I’m gonna be the one doing the talking, I can guarantee you,” Smith said.
How the fight fell apart
This rivalry already had a booking. Smith and Holland were set to meet at UFC Oklahoma City in July, and Holland pulled out not long before fight night with an injury. Holland hasn’t competed since. He’s now scheduled to face Uros Medic at UFC 334 on Nov. 14, which takes him off the board for Smith in the near term.
Smith, meanwhile, has been busy. Saturday marks his second fight this month, a short-notice step-in against “Rude Boy” Brown in the co-main of a Las Vegas card headlined by a lightweight bout between Renato Moicano and Tom Nolan. Bloody Elbow called Brown the toughest test of Smith’s career so far, and a win could push him past the Holland conversation entirely and toward a top-12 welterweight. He’s doing all this without a number next to his name in the top 15 at 170, though Michael Chiesa has gone as far as saying Smith could give Islam Makhachev a tough fight right now.
Quick take
I’ll be honest, I’m on Smith’s side of the scheduling argument, mostly because of the receipts he’s stacking in the actual cage. A guy who takes two fights in one month, the second on short notice against a veteran like Brown, has earned the right to be annoyed at a dance partner who keeps finding reasons the dates don’t work. The smack talk is noise. What matters is that if Smith goes through Brown on Saturday, Holland’s Nov. 14 fight with Medic stops being a detour and starts looking like the last chance to call this one before Smith outgrows it.
