Countdown to UFC 196: Holly Holm a True Champion

This weekend UFC 196 will be taking over Vegas and will be headlined by the welterweight fight between Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz, but the co-main event will happen between Holly Holm and Miesha Tate.

Holm will be defending her title which she won from Ronda Rousey at UFC 193 with an impressive high kick to the side of the head. You'll have to excuse my bias for Holly as I went to high school with her and have watched her transform over the years from an incredibly gifted soccer player into the stellar athlete she is today.

Part of what makes Holly a tremendous champion apart from her athletic ability is her respect for the sport. She knows that a knockout can strike at any moment that on any given day a champion could lose their belt. It's a refreshing change but when watching her post-fight conferences and subsequent interviews you keep waiting. Waiting for a champion to misspeak. Say something that will make her "the bad guy" but she never does, because that's who she is.

While she's not the show boat that Rousey was and will continue to be, Holly will be a quiet champion, putting in the work at the gym, doing the interviews that sometimes seem like a necessary annoyance to her. She will win fights, and will lose some too but the one thing that will always remain intact is her class, and that's something that can never be won, only earned.