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Max Holloway could be packing two world titles in his suitcase when he returns home in two weeks. Read more

Max Holloway could be packing two world titles in his suitcase when he returns home in two weeks.

If he does so, he will have erased Dustin Poirier’s 2-0 mark against Hawaii opponents.

It’s that second fact that has Holloway eagerly anticipating his UFC interim lightweight title fight that will headline UFC 236 on April 13 in Atlanta.

The current 145-pound champion could become the seventh fighter in UFC history to win world titles in different weight classes and the fourth to do so at the same time.

Add in the UFC’s second-longest active winning streak at 13 fights and there are a lot of numbers at play in 10 days.

But it’s that 2-0 mark in particular that Holloway is looking to end.

“That doesn’t sit well with me,” he said Tuesday after his final training session at home.

Holloway was submitted by Poirier, who has also TKO’d Makaha’s Yancy Medeiros, seven years ago in his UFC debut when he was 20 years old.

It remains the only time Holloway has been stopped in a professional career lasting 23 fights to date.

While Holloway has cleaned out the featherweight division since losing to Conor McGregor, Poirier has been on his own streak since a loss to McGregor in 2014.

He’s won eight of nine with stoppage victories over former UFC champions Anthony Pettis and Eddie Alvarez during his latest four-fight winning streak.

With current 155-pound champion Khabib Nurmagomedov serving a suspension for his role in a postfight brawl after his win over McGregor in October, Holloway and Poirier will fight for an interim title.

It’s a similar situation to when Holloway beat Pettis for the interim featherweight belt in December 2016 when champion Jose Aldo wasn’t ready to fight.

He then unified the titles with a win over Aldo six months later.

“I got my first title — an interim title — and the cool thing with the interim title is if you win the belt, you fight as a champion and get paid as a champion and there are all kinds of stuff that comes with fighting as a champion in contracts,” Holloway said. “I’m just not going to carry it around like some people.

“I felt like I was a champion before (winning) the belt. When I (beat) Aldo the first time, that was just clarifying it for the world to know that I was the champion. I carried myself as a champ but that Pettis fight is what helped me. It helped people find out this dude is the champ, this dude is going to be something amazing. I waited for that fight to call me champ.”

The winner is expected to fight Nurmagomedov (27-0, 11-0) later this year, but Nurmagomedov has threatened not to return until November when the suspensions of his teammates for their role in the McGregor brawl are over.

It’s also unclear whether Nurmagomedov would defend his title in his next fight or not. The organization needs a champion in a stacked division that also includes No. 1-ranked former titleholder Tony Ferguson, who has won 11 in a row since 2012, but is currently involved in legal issues pertaining to a domestic violence incident.

“We don’t know when (Nurmagomedov) comes back,” Holloway said. “Imagine if he waits until November or imagine if his brothers tell him to come back sooner or imagine if he takes a fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. in boxing. There are a lot of things that can happen in that amount of time.

“Eight months without a champion defending (his title) is surprising, especially if he can, so the interim title has its perks. I’m just the man who gets to go out there and make history again.”