Holly Elizabeth Holm was born on October 17, 1981, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and grew up nearby in Bosque Farms with two older brothers, Brian and Weston. Her father, Roger Holm, was a Church of Christ preacher, which earned Holly the nickname “The Preacher’s Daughter” that has followed her through both of her fighting careers. Her mother, Tammy Bredy, worked as a massage therapist. Holm has said her rural upbringing, riding dirt bikes and roughhousing with her brothers, gave her the toughness that carried into the ring, and she still carries a scar from a childhood dirt bike accident.

She discovered boxing as a teenager and turned professional in 2002, well before mixed martial arts became her primary sport.

Holm built her name first in boxing, where she compiled a 33-2-3 professional record before stepping away from the sport in 2013, winning world titles in three different weight divisions and defending them a combined 18 times. She was named Ring Magazine’s Female Fighter of the Year in both 2005 and 2006, and was later inducted into the International Women’s Boxing Hall of Fame in 2017 and the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2022.

Holm made her professional MMA debut in March 2011 and signed with the UFC in July 2014, making her promotional debut in February 2015 with a decision win over Raquel Pennington. Nine months later she produced one of the most famous moments in the sport’s history: at UFC 193 in Melbourne on November 15, 2015, Holm knocked out previously undefeated champion Ronda Rousey with a second-round head kick to win the UFC Women’s Bantamweight Championship, an upset that turned her into a global sports name almost overnight.

Holm’s reign as champion was short. She lost the bantamweight title to Miesha Tate by submission at UFC 196 on March 5, 2016, and never regained UFC gold despite remaining one of the division’s most consistent contenders for nearly a decade. Her UFC run included wins over fighters such as Bethe Correia and Mayra Bueno Silva, and losses to Amanda Nunes, Valentina Shevchenko, Cris Cyborg, Ketlen Vieira and, in her UFC 300 appearance in April 2024, a second-round submission loss to Olympic judo gold medalist Kayla Harrison. She asked for and received her release from the UFC on January 13, 2025, closing out an MMA career recorded by Sherdog at 15 wins, 7 losses and 1 no-contest.

Rather than retire, Holm returned to her original sport. In May 2025 she signed a three-fight contract with Jake Paul’s Most Valuable Promotions, and on June 28, 2025 she made her first boxing appearance in twelve years, beating previously unbeaten Yolanda Vega by unanimous decision on the undercard of Jake Paul vs. Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. That win set up a shot at Stephanie Han’s WBA lightweight title, but Holm came up short twice in 2026: a technical decision loss on January 3 after the bout was stopped early due to an accidental headbutt cut, and a disputed majority decision loss in the rematch on May 30, a result Holm and much of the boxing press publicly questioned. Her boxing record stands at roughly 34-4-3 as of August 2026, and she has said she has one or two fights left, in either sport, before retirement.

Holm’s income has never followed a fixed annual salary; it moves in large, fight-by-fight increments tied to purses, win bonuses, pay-per-view points and sponsorship payments, so any year-by-year figure is an approximation built from disclosed and reported fight pay rather than a confirmed tax filing. Her highest-earning stretches were 2015-2016, around the Rousey and Tate fights, and 2017-2019, when she was drawing $300,000-plus purses against top-ranked opponents such as Cris Cyborg and Amanda Nunes. Reported combined UFC career earnings, based on disclosed athletic-commission purses compiled by outlets such as Sherdog, run into the low millions of dollars gross, before taxes, coaching splits and training expenses.

Holm’s early UFC contract, signed in July 2014, paid modestly by the promotion’s normal scale: her official UFC debut against Raquel Pennington reportedly paid a $25,000 show purse plus a $25,000 win bonus. Her pay jumped sharply once she became a champion-level draw. For the Rousey fight at UFC 193, reporting at the time put her disclosed purse well below Rousey’s record-setting $4.5 million-plus payday, though Holm also collected a $50,000 “Fight of the Night” bonus and a separate Reebok apparel-sponsorship tier payment. Sherdog’s disclosed-salary reporting put her purse at $300,000 for her December 2017 fight with Cris Cyborg at UFC 219, one of the largest disclosed purses of her UFC career, and she was again in the $300,000 range for her 2019 loss to Amanda Nunes at UFC 239. These are official-commission “show” numbers only; total compensation including undisclosed bonuses, PPV points for main-event bouts and sponsorship is typically higher.

Her current contract is with Jake Paul and Nakisa Bidarian’s Most Valuable Promotions, a three-fight boxing deal signed in May 2025 that multiple outlets reported as the richest of her career on a per-fight basis, though MVP has not published exact purse figures for the Vega or Han bouts.

As a UFC athlete between 2015 and 2025, Holm was paid through the promotion’s Reebok uniform-sponsorship program, which set tiered fighter payments per fight based on tenure and title status rather than individual brand deals. In 2016 she also signed a multi-year personal endorsement agreement with the supplement company Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals, appearing in advertising for several of its products; that partnership drew media scrutiny after some of the sponsored supplements were reported to contain DMAA, a stimulant banned by anti-doping regulators, though Holm herself was never sanctioned in connection with the deal. Beyond these, Holm’s sponsorship income has largely come from smaller supplement, apparel and combat-sports-industry partnerships typical of a champion-tier MMA and boxing fighter rather than mainstream consumer brand campaigns.

Outside the cage and ring, Holm holds a New Mexico real estate license and has worked alongside her father, Roger Holm, listing and selling homes in the Albuquerque area; she has said in interviews that fight camps have periodically pulled her away from that side business. Some fan and aggregator sites report that Holm owns a namesake MMA gym in Albuquerque with an estimated value; that claim is not corroborated by primary reporting, and her long-documented training home throughout her MMA career has instead been Jackson Wink MMA Academy under coaches Greg Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn, a gym she trains at rather than owns. No other business ventures or company stakes for Holm are documented in mainstream sports or business reporting.

Holm has kept her personal life low-profile and has not publicly disclosed details of a home, car collection or other major asset purchases. She has lived in and around Albuquerque, New Mexico for most of her career and continues to be based there for training. Given her active real estate license, some of her documented income has come from property transactions themselves rather than personal property holdings, but no specific residence, investment property or luxury asset owned by Holm is confirmed in public records or credible reporting as of this update.