'It's not beef, he's chicken'…Kevin Holland aims to 'annoy' Joaquin Buckley ahead of UFC 307 in Salt Lake City.

Kevin Holland tears up Joaquin Buckley, New Mansa shoots back

Kevin “Trailblazer” Holland was the first to deal with the music at UFC 307’s pre-fight media day.

“I figured if I beat up Buckley before the fight, you'll lose a fight and I'll get in trouble,” Holland admitted, grinning cheekily as he remarked, “If you want the truth, I'll give it to you.” tell the truth.

“It's not beef, this mother is chicken,” declared Holland, with the popular American having defeated “New Mansa” by a third-round knockout as they bounced back in 2020, albeit in Buckley's UFC debut.

Since that fight, Buckley has gone 9-3 in the promotion and is on an impressive four-fight winning streak that includes victories over Vicente Luque and Nursulton Ruziboev.

“Buckley is annoying,” Holland continued, before admitting that he would have discouraged mutual opponent Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson from taking such a fight with his former opponent.

“I don’t understand why Wonderboy would want to do this [fight]. Wonderboy was once wanted [to fight] someone who just wanted to strike with him [and] “Buckley won’t come easy with him, so Wonderboy will probably lose this fight.”

Just a few minutes later, it was Buckley's turn to answer questions from the media, with the outspoken welterweight quickly laughing at Holland's comments: “I'm not staying at the fighter hotel either.”

“I don’t know, man, I guess everyone wants to fight little buck… Whatever, there’s no problems, I don’t have a problem with Kevin Holland, you know?

“I’m here to fight Stephan Thomas and get my paycheck. “So if Kevin wants to get into trouble or trouble, he has to stop me, that’s all.”

Buckley settles his feud with former double champion Daniel Cormier

While the issue with Holland is certainly not resolved, Buckley managed to resolve his long-standing feud with former UFC double champion Daniel Cormier.

The two were involved in a bitter back and forth, with Buckley calling the legendary fighter a “whore” while DC called Buckley a “p****” over the controversial outburst.

Luckily, “New Mansa” confirmed in an interview for ESPN that the two had reconciled earlier in the day; However, he would have preferred if the cameras had been turned off for the first interaction.

“I just talked to DC, that was cool – we were in front of the cameras, I thought we'd be alone in a room for a while and we could talk like men… It is what it is, we.” I had a good conversation , a good interview and this will be published for people to see.

“I thought this was going to happen [off-camera]I think that’s the kind of conversation I’d rather have, if anything, if I’m more comfortable with it.”

According to the official UFC 307 event page, Buckley vs. Thompson is set to be the final preliminary bout of the evening, while Holland vs. Dolidze is scheduled to open the main card – all streaming live from Salt Lake City this weekend.

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