Kevin Holland is a fun guy. He shows up to gatherings and makes it a party. When Julija Stoliarenko fainted twice on the scale on Friday and made everyone question the sanctity of weight-cutting, Holland came out right afterward and did a cartwheel. It was comic relief in a grim moment. He can make people laugh at funerals, just by being himself.

That was kind of the “hey you really have to check this dude out” narrative in play heading into Saturday night. Holland had a nice five-fight win streak, yet he had a Chatty Cathy blue streak that extended back to the womb. Those two things added up to something like “intrigue.”

Yet, if we were reminded of anything on Saturday night, it’s that the fight game has almost no sense of humor. And that guys like Derek Brunson are party poopers of the worst kind. Brunson wasn’t about to get lured into Holland’s in-fight conversations, like poor Jacare did. He looked like Kevin Randleman but assumed the aura of Hannah Cifers. When Holland tried to slap five with him, Brunson walked away like he was being drawn to the hypnotic sound of some distant flute.

He was being rude, in other words. And he was rude throughout the whole 25-minute party.

The first takedown was really a slip, but didn’t matter to Brunson. He climbed on Holland and went to work. He got his elbows into the action and happily blasted a few punches through the wickets. It was a buzzkill of a first round for anyone who had jumped on the Holland bandwagon, but at least half of the allure held up. Holland was talking to Brunson the whole time. He had a nice conversation with Khabib Nurmagomedov between rounds, too, joking around about teaching him to wrestle, and Nurmagomedov’s cheeks flushed pink. Nurmagomedov pointed to Brunson as if to say, “veddy funny, but you might want to focus!”

The words kept coming, and so did the takedowns. So did the Brunson punches. Nothing spectacular. It was just Brunson doing what he did to Edmen Shahbazyan back in August. Just subtly making idiots of Vegas odds-makers, as Holland tried to break the ice a bit with some small talk. But there was this expectation that any minute Holland would keep things standing and knock Brunson out. He needed some room was all. At one point in the third round, he wobbled Brunson a bit with a shot and tried to do just that. That kept the drama turned up just enough.

But as the round played out with Holland on the bottom of a very insistent wrestler, the drama itself was taking the licks. Hype was dying on the vine and in real time. The conversation from Holland became more of a peeve, and there was a collective groan from people who’d tuned in to see Holland do work. At some point the talk needed to match the action. Instead it was the words of a man in good humor attached incongruously to a helpless being, which had bettors sending angry texts.*

Each time the fight went to the ground the frustration level rose, as the pattern of the fight refused to budge. Yet heading into the fifth round there was still a feeling that Holland might catch Brunson on the feet before the next inevitable tumble to the ground. It was possible, wasn’t it? That Holland would snatch victory from the jaws of defeat?

Didn’t happen. The excitement was extinguished because one guy’s ability to do one thing trumped the other guy’s ability to do anything about it.

Holland’s win streak came to a crashing halt, and quiet Derek Brunson — a man born without a funny bone in his body — succeeded in taking out another hyped prospect. It wasn’t what people tuned in for, as Brunson played the role of spoiler (once again) with supreme confidence. Where does it leave Brunson, who coming into his last couple of fights has been cast as a literal gatekeeper? He emerges as an unlikely contender, which in this case if the dreaded kind because he keeps stealing all that fight game thunder.

As for Holland? He says he might move down to 170 pounds, pointing out that the guys at middleweight are pretty big. He was still in good spirits in defeat, even if there was very little fun to be had on Saturday night. Holland can tell you all about it in great detail, but the short version goes like this: Brunson got the last word by getting his hand raised, while the fight game — that humorless bastard — once again got the last laugh.

(*Especially if it’s shaved into the sides of a man’s hair).