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Max Holloway Back Tattoo Meaning: UFC Star Explains Symbolism of His Angel and Demon Wing Back Tattoo

Kishore R
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Max Holloway (blue gloves) reacts after defeating Justin Gaethje (red gloves) during UFC 300 at T-Mobile Arena

Much like the famous Gorilla on Conor McGregor’s chest, and Tony Ferguson’s iconic back tattoo, featherweight sensation Max Holloway also has some distinctive designs adorning his body. One among them is his peculiar back tattoo. During a GQ exclusive, the Hawaiian gave the community a close look at his inks, revealing the unknown stories behind them.

The featherweight champion is a sucker for tattoos. No matter how many he gets on him, he will always add a new one to his body even after promising to himself that this will be the last one.

As it turns out, there’s a deeper meaning to the wings on his back than it meets the eye. It’s Holloway’s rendition of the Yin & Yang concept. While one of the two wings on his back depicts an angel wing, the other one is a gargoyle wing – representing the duality of life.

And as Holloway describes it – life is all about balance hence the angel and gargoyle wings.

“My second tattoo was my wings, I was eighteen. It’s good and bad you know, angel and gargoyle wing, it’s kind of a Yin &Yang thing you know that tattoo. That tattoo is like it’s balance, in this world we need balance, we need peace you know and that’s why I got my back tattoo, took four hours and we did it in one session straight!” 

Speaking about the duality of life, Conor McGregor, who generally lives to diss his colleagues or former colleagues, depending on one’s perusal of his situation, has come out in support of Holloway in his featherweight title fight against champion Ilia Topuria.

Conor disses Topuria – “F*** him up”

Following its massive PPV event at Salt Lake City, Utah, the UFC octagon is going to the Middle East, returning to Abu Dhabi for a banger of a card featuring the featherweight title bout between Ilia Topuria & Max Holloway in the main event.

As a matter of fact, this will be the newly crowned featherweight champ’s first title defense and an opportunity to prove that he is the UFC’s best boxer.

Now ahead of the bout, ‘The Notorious’ Conor McGregor is in Spain putting on a BKFC event in Marbella scheduled for tomorrow. Naturally, the Irishman being in the country had to call the country’s best – Ilia.

He deemed that ‘El Matador’ wasn’t even a real Spaniard, mentioning his German, and Georgian roots before he pledged his allegiance to Holloway, saying,

Good luck, Max Holloway. F*** him up!” 

Of course, McGregor has a loose grasp on what constitutes a Spaniard or any national for that matter, owing to his often regressive and reprehensible views on immigration, for which he has been called out by the Irish media back home as well.

Post Edited By:Smrutisnat Jena

About the author

Kishore R

Kishore R

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Kishore is a MMA journalist at The SportsRush with over two years of experience and more than 2000 articles to his name. While he is a qualified engineer, he truly enjoys his time crafting stories from the world of mixed martial arts. Old testament in his MMA education, Kishore picked up the sport watching the highlights of 1989’s Fight of the Year bout between Roberto Duran and Iran Barkley and has since been hooked to the controlled violence this sport is capable of. Following MMA for almost a decade and a half, Kishore has an advanced understanding of its tactical nature and uses his love for storytelling to express it with great effect. But most of all, he just wants to see Tony Ferguson bounce back and showcase his old swagger - “IT’S TONY TIME!”

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