Aug. 8, 2009. Philadelphia. Hot on the heels of the landmark UFC 100 card one month prior, the company makes its debut in the City of Brotherly Love.
Somewhere in the sellout crowd of 17,411 at the then-Wachovia Center was a 16-year old from Texas named Kevin Holland who was watching the UFC live for the first time.
Holland was in town visiting his father’s side of the family for the first time. While he had started training in martial arts, he wasn’t a dyed-in-the-wool UFC fan. But like an untold amount of others, he had been drawn in by the spectacle of the Brock Lesnar-Frank Mir fight, which was one of the UFC’s first events which truly transcended into the mainstream, and he was curious to see the product live when he had the chance.