Square Kady Pascual Headshot RGZ5762

Kady Pascual

Hawaiʻi Scene on Social

[{"type":"text","text":"If you know, you know."}]

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Erwin paulino realtor TRAINING BRA

<title>Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Learning a new language</title>

Today’s social media find comes from @ erwin.paulino.realtor, with a local kine joke

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Learning a new language

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Katie Helland Headshot

Katie Helland

Arts & Entertainment

Business & Tourism

t has announced its next director and CEO, David Odo, who will start on Sept. 1.

Odo, who grew up in Kailua, is currently the director and chief curator at the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia. There he oversees institutional vision and strategy, as well as fundraising, collections, educational direction, and more. 

Under Odo’s leadership, the Georgia Museum of Art had paid membership increase 67%, donors grow 8% and overall museum revenue increase 141%, according to numbers shared by HoMA.

“David brings the experience, vision and leadership that HoMA needs as we prepare to enter our second century,” said Amber Strong Makaiau, chair of HoMA’s board of trustees, in a written statement. “His record of strengthening museums through thoughtful strategic growth, sound institutional stewardship, and meaningful community engagement gives us every confidence that he is the right leader for HoMA at this important moment in our history. His understanding of Hawai‘i and international experience uniquely position him to lead the museum forward.”

, who led the museum for about a year, and former director 

, who led it for five years, from 2020 to 2025, before becoming director at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.   

He is the son of Franklin Odo, who helped found the 

 at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

Previously, he held leadership positions at Harvard Art Museums and Yale University Art Gallery

“I am honored to work alongside the Honolulu Museum of Art’s talented team, trustees, members, supporters, educators, and community partners at this important moment in its history,” said Odo, in a written statement. “HoMA holds a world-class collection, deep civic roots, and a community that has claimed it as its own for nearly a hundred years. What excites me is honoring that legacy while boldly positioning the museum for its next century.”

Founded in 1927, HoMA has more than 55,000 works for art from around the world. As a middle school student, Oda remembers being drawn to the sculptures in the Buddhism gallery.

“They sparked my curiosity about world religions,” he said, in a written statement. “That’s one of the things I love about art museums — they hold so much possibility to encourage one’s interest in a limitless number of subjects, and I’m excited to continue that legacy for others in our community.”

HoMA is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday, with extended hours until 9 p.m. on Fridays. Admission is $15 for kamaʻāina. It is free for youth 18 years old or younger, as well as college students attending Hawaiʻi state universities or colleges, and SNAP beneficiaries. 

David Odo

<title>HoMA announces new director and CEO</title>

The Honolulu Museum of Art has announced its next director and CEO, who will assume the role on Sept. 1. Learn more about the executive, who grew up in Kailua.

HoMA announces new director and CEO

Square Mike Brestovansky Headshot RGZ3736 Large

Michael Brestovansky

Government & Politics

Crime & Courts

A civil complaint alleging that Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke violating campaign spending laws will go to the state Attorney General for potential prosecution.

Last week, the Hawai‘i Campaign Spending Commission published a 

 accusing Luke and her campaign team of 12 different violations of campaign finance laws during the 2022 election.

On Wednesday, the Commission moved to refer their complaint to the state office of the Attorney General, which is already conducting a separate investigation into financial impropriety by Luke, tied to the infamous 

 that was the subject of an FBI investigation.

The commission’s complaint accuses Luke, her husband Michael Luke, campaign treasurers Emmanuel Zibakalam, Leodoloff Asuncion Jr., and Matthew Sasaki, deputy treasurer Kalowena Komeiji, and the Friends of Sylvia Luke of mishandling campaign funds.

The complaint includes allegations that Luke signed checks for her candidate committee instead of a treasurer, that her treasurers signed checks for the committee despite no longer being listed as treasurers — some of which were to the former treasurers themselves — and that the group failed to accurately report campaign expenditures to the commission.

The complaint concluded with two options: either the Commission concludes that a violation of law likely took place and refer the matter to the Attorney General; or the Commission makes its own preliminary determination, fines Luke and her associates $28,300 and orders them to correct their campaign spending reports within 20 days. 

On Wednesday, the Commission voted for the former option. The vote was unanimous, although Commission Vice Chair Danton Wong recused himself from proceedings Wednesday, citing a conflict of interest based on prior donations he made to Luke.

Eunice Park, general counsel for the Commission, said the extent of the alleged impropriety cannot be attributed to technical errors, particularly given Luke’s extensive political career. She said Luke had “ample opportunity” to correct the violations in the four years since her election, but did not.

Attorney David Louie, who represents Luke and the Friends of Sylvia Luke, spoke briefly before the Commission, but only to decline comment.

Fellow Attorney Randall Hironaka, representing Michael Luke, Komeiji and Sasaki, asked the Commission if his clients could be left off the complaint because, he said, the complaint does not allege any criminal activity by his clients, merely that untoward activity was made without their authorization.

Nonetheless, Park told Hironaka that it will be up to the Attorney General to determine the criminality of anyone named in the complaint.

Luke’s campaign finances from 2022 have come under heavy scrutiny this year as fallout continues from an FBI corruption investigation.

That investigation had previously alleged that former Hawai‘i Rep. Ty Cullen — who had turned informant for the agency — oversaw a transaction between an unknown man and “an influential state legislator” involving the $35,000 in 2022. In February, Luke denied any involvement in that transaction, but admitted that she had accepted two $5,000 checks during a 2022 dinner with former Cullen.

That admission — Luke claimed she never cashed the checks, but never reported the contributions — led to further investigations of Luke’s 2022 campaign finances. In the midst of the furor, Luke 

 in April she will not run for reelection this year, and days later 

 she would take an indefinite leave of absence, which has continued to this day.

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DavidLouie

<title>State AG to investigate alleged Sylvia Luke campaign finance violations</title>

A complaint by the Campaign Spending Commission alleging 12 campaign finance violations has been referred to the state Attorney General for possible prosecution.

State AG to investigate alleged Sylvia Luke campaign finance violations

Kam Napier Headshot

A. Kam Napier

Columnists

If you’re a street junkie, shooting up heroin in Chinatown, the State of Hawai‘i has your back. It’ll take our tax dollars and turn them into clean needles, so you can keep on shooting safely.

Fentanyl addict? Go for it! Chances are you’ll never get busted for public intoxication (though it’s a crime), or possession (a crime), and if you overdose, the state will once again turn tax dollars into Narcan to save your life. All your emergency rooms visits? Not to worry! “The people” have you covered with their tax dollars and inflated insurance premiums.

If you’re an alcoholic, the State of Hawai‘i just doesn’t care. Legislators drink, after all, they’re not going to go after their own Heineken and Merlot. Just don’t drink and drive, that’s the only area where we see public policy put any time and money. Everyone seems perfectly confident that ID checks at the liquor store are keeping booze out of the hands of children.

Love pot? Lucky you live Hawai‘i! Hawai‘i loves pot and Hawai‘i loves you! It’s de facto legal, based on how often you can smell pot in the open. And it’s trivially easy to go the law-abiding medical marijuana route. Tell a doctor you’re anxious, get a prescription and it’s off the pot pharmacy you go. Enjoy! After all, we’ve hashed this issue out for years now and all sensible people agree that drug prohibitions never work. You have to respect people’s choices and just legalize and tax their habit.

But if you’re a smoker who’d like to quit smoking cigarettes by going to a safer but similar alternative, this same State of Hawai‘i has just two words.

, Gov. Josh Green just signed a law that as of January 1, 2027, will ban “99.9% of disposable vapes” in Hawai‘i. Flanked by public health officials and the obligatory Child For Whom We Do This, he positively beamed with pride.

Over what, exactly? Doctor Governor Green should be aware that if harm reduction works for hard drugs, it certainly does with nicotine. The UK’s NHS (formerly known as the National Health Service), which is beloved by American Democrats as an ideal model of universal health care, has 

“In recent years, e-cigarettes have become a very popular stop smoking aid in the UK. Also known as vapes or e-cigs, they're far less harmful than cigarettes, and can help you quit smoking for good. … Many thousands of people in the UK have already stopped smoking with the help of an e-cigarette. There's evidence that they can be effective. A 2021 review found people who used e-cigarettes to quit smoking, as well as having expert face-to-face support, can be up to twice as likely to succeed as people who used other nicotine replacement products, such as patches or gum.”

Our reporter asked Green about that. He replied with skepticism, saying, “The biggest problem has been getting an entire generation … innumerable middle schoolers and high schoolers hooked,” Green said. “Society has found ways to quit traditional cigarettes through medical means, through behavioral techniques; we should lean on those.”

Does he even hear himself? He said this while signing an e-cig prohibition law. Not medical means, not behavioral techniques, no, just the ban hammer. Meanwhile, actual tobacco cigarettes, the really dangerous ones we didn’t ban, remain perfectly available.

Then Green put Lola Irvin on the spot for further comment on our question. Irvin is administrator of the state Department of Health’s Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion Division. As we reported, she said adults who have concurrently used traditional cigarettes and e-cigarettes are less likely to successfully quit smoking, while young people who begin using e-cigarettes are more likely to transition to smoking traditional cigarettes.

[{"type":"text","text":"So much for harm reduction!"}]

Irvin seems unaware of the NHS findings I shared above about people successfully using e-cigs to quit tobacco cigarettes or reduce their intake. There are other studies.

Efficacy and Safety of E-Cigarette Use for Smoking Cessation: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials

,” for example, published in 2023 at The American Journal of Medicine. Conclusion: “Nicotine e-cigarettes were associated with increased smoking abstinence in comparison with non-nicotine e-cigarettes. Furthermore, nicotine and non-nicotine e-cigarettes increased abstinence compared with conventional smoking cessation therapies, and the absolute risk of [Serious Adverse Events] was low across all trials. Overall, these data suggest e-cigarettes appear to be more efficacious than conventional nicotine replacement or behavioral smoking cessation therapies.”

, published last November. “Nicotine e-cigarettes can help people to stop smoking for at least six months,” it concludes. “Evidence shows they work better than nicotine replacement therapy, and probably better than e-cigarettes without nicotine. They may work better than no support, or behavioral support alone, and may not be associated with serious unwanted effects.”

As for her arguments that e-cigs and vaping makes teenagers more likely to take up smoking real tobacco cigarettes, there are indeed studies that find teens given to try vices will try both vaping and smoking, sometimes in that order, sometimes the other way around. These studies find they’ll often also try pot and booze.

When you measure what youths actually do, however, the astonishing and wonderful fact is that 

peaked in 1997 at 36.4%, considerably higher than the adult rate that year of 24.7%. By 2021, the youth smoking rate dropped to just 3.8%, well below the adult rate of 11.5%.

That’s an 86% decline in just 24 years, across all ethnicities, sexes and grade levels.

And it has dropped even more since then, despite the arrival of e-cigs and vaping. As of 2024, according to the 

, just 1.4% of high school students reported any use of tobacco cigarettes.

, found that from 2022 to 2025, e-cigarette and tobacco cigarette use among youth further declined while nicotine pouch use remained low and stable.

In other words, we won the war on youth smoking, without any prohibitions at all. When our governor says that "an entire generation … innumerable middle schoolers and high schoolers" have just been "hooked" on nicotine, he is flat out lying. The exact opposite is true. 

Rather than declare victory and keep on with existing, obviously effective policies, Hawai‘i snatched a crisis from the jaws of success and enacted this ban.

Because they did so in part to “protect our keiki,” they had a student speak at yesterday's press conference, Maya Butts. The bathrooms at her school, Kalaheo High School, she said have become just “places to vape.”

That’s surely against school rules and is certainly already illegal, so this sounds like an enforcement problem to me. Except the enforcers failed to uphold existing law. Then she said:

“I’ve watched my smart, athletic friends completely lose their motivation. They got hooked on these devices that taste like candy, move on to other substances, then lose their spark altogether.”

I hate to break it to Butts, but if vaping makes her schoolmates lethargic and lazy, they aren’t vaping nicotine. They’re vaping pot.

But the ban is about more than health and protecting kids, Green said, and the text of the legislation argues. It’s about protecting the environment. In each disposable vape is a battery and these batteries are getting into the environment, they asserted, without data.

Setting aside the fact that I’ve never seen the gutters lined with thrown-away vapes the way one used to see cigarette butts, I’ll just note that this is the same state government that is forcing us to import batteries by the tons for our carbon-free solar future. A half-ton battery in every EV. Batteries the size of a Matson cargo container for the solar farms. All with no plan for their disposal or recycling.

OK, so if you dig into facts and find that there is no youth smoking crisis, and the stated rationalizations for the ban range from transparently bogus to logically inconsistent, what’s really going on here?

[{"type":"text","text":"Class warfare, that’s what."}]

Vaping nicotine is, by and large, a lower-middle class and working-class vice. Construction laborers, single moms working two or three jobs, people who ride the bus. People who rent. They have ambitions and aspirations constantly thwarted by Hawai‘i high cost of living and ridiculously unnecessary housing shortage.

They’re tired, they’re stressed. They turned, at some point in their lives, to Kool Milds and Marlboro Lights to deal with it all. They know smoking is bad, though, but quitting is hard. Smoking is a pleasure, it’s a consolation. It both calms anxiety and sharpens concentration.

Then, miracle of miracles, technology gave them a better choice. Tobacco-free nicotine they can inhale for the same soothing, sensual pleasures they got from smoking, with none of the known carcinogens, none of the pilau smell.

On the other hand, we have the upper-middle class and those who aspire to that status. Your governors, legislators, health department careerists and high school faculty. People with social capital and clout, if not vast wealth beyond the equity in their home that they own. Few to none of these white-collar, college-educated professionals ever smoked, or quit years ago. They know better.

[{"type":"text","text":"They took one look at vaping and thought, in unison:"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“That looks stupid. That looks tacky. That looks low-class.”"}]

That’s it. That’s the whole mindset. All the people who pushed this ban won’t say it, because they know how it sounds. No one wants to be seen as a snob and a Karen, they want to hide that. So they prop up children as human shields, gin up a non-existent crisis and use health and the environment as fig leaves.

All those smiling faces at that press conference? That’s the look of people gloating in triumph.

[{"type":"text","text":"“We took something stupid away from the stupid people! Yay, us!”"}]

That’s all that happened yesterday, and Hawai‘i is a better place as a result. For them.

A. Kam Napier is editor in chief of Aloha State Daily. His opinions in Pipikaula Corner are his own and not reflective of the ASD team.

Vapes i Stock 2232713126 16x9

<title>Pipikaula Corner: Hawai‘i's fraudulent vape ban</title>

On Tuesday, Hawai‘i Gov. Josh Green signed into law a ban on "99.9% of disposable vapes." It's a move totally at odds with the harm reduction strategies the state uses for all other vices, argues ASD Editor in Chief A. Kam Napier. And it's in response to a non-existent crisis, in that teen smoking and vaping is the lowest it's ever been in a quarter century.

Pipikaula Corner: Hawai‘i's fraudulent vape ban

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta Headshot

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta

Food & Dining

, coming up with a name for her store was easy. Her husband owns Hideaway Barbershop, which is connected to the coffee shop by a shelf-like door.

“Many people that notice it (our coffee shop) say it’s like a speakeasy-like coffee shop,” Maldonado says. “Our friends own the tattoo shop in front of the building (here in Wahiawā); the opportunity came for the barber shop to open in the back about three years ago. Later on, the small space for the coffee shop became available, too, and we went for it.”

While customers won’t see the coffee shop immediately from the street, follow the signs toward the barber shop entrance to find the cozy space.

“My husband owns the barber shop, our friends own the tattoo shop, and there’s a skate shop in here,” Maldonado summarizes. “It (this space) really gives collective vibes. It’s really good; during summer or after school, kids can come and the parents can sit here and have coffee.”

The business started as a coffee cart and later moved into the café space.

“It’s tucked away, truly a hideaway,” Maldonado says. “Everyone that finds us points out how fitting of a name it is. It’s a place to slow down, talk story and also find cool local artists, crafts and retail items. We also sell specialty coffee beans from Sur Coffee, a well-known roaster/coffee shop from Southern California.”

The menu features drinks ranging from lattes and housemade cold brews to matcha lattes and yuzu lemonades. Prices vary depending on syrups.

“Our menu has a classic feel, but is very customizable, with some key special items,” Maldonado says. “We have homemade syrups like strawberry, banana, blueberry and raspberry. Our most popular has to be our banana bread syrup, which is used in coffee as well as matcha.

“I didn’t want to make a really big specialty latte menu and have it be overwhelming,” she adds. “We have a small selection of specialty items for each season. All year, you can customize (your drink) to have whatever cold foam you want, with whatever base you want — matcha, coffee or cold brew.”

The coffee shop is currently featuring a summer menu that includes a s’mores latte, chocolate haupia latte, white chocolate cold brew with strawberry cold foam, and mystic yuzu lemonade. Summer drinks start at $10, according to Maldonado.

The s’mores latte features a chocolate mocha with toasted marshmallow cold foam and graham crackers. Meanwhile, the chocolate haupia latte is a mocha with coconut condensed milk cold foam and a shortbread crumble.

 Fog, which is “picking up in popularity for its uniqueness.”

“It’s a new take on a London Fog, with stone-ground earl grey — which is prepared as matcha (powder, warm water and whisked) — served with milk, lavender and vanilla,” she explains. “It’s a very special drink, served hot or iced.”

Maldonado says kid-friendly drinks — including fruit-flavored lemonade and chocolate milk — are also available. The shop also features a rotating selection of pastries.

“Our pastries are nostalgic,” she says. “The most popular are our chocolate chip cookies with flaky sea salt. We rotate our muffins; we’re currently serving peach blueberry muffins. We add another fun pastry on the weekends, like a fruit bar or double chocolate brownies.”

The coffee shop’s summer menu will be available until August, according to Maldonado. Around that time, different seasonal drinks will be featured.

“We’ll switch into a more transitionary, back-to-school type of menu with (drinks like) peanut butter and jelly lattes,” she says. “I’m very nostalgic with flavors. I like things to be simple, but exciting at the same time.

“We see ourselves as the future ‘mom and pop shop,’ which still adding a fun, modern take on it,” she adds.

Maldonado recommends looking for street parking along Kamehameha Highway or on Ohai Street (behind the shop). She says there is also a municipal lot across the street from the shop (by the bus stop).

Open 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesdays to Fridays, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays 

Hideaway Coffee Shop owner 062826

<title>This Wahiawā coffee shop is tucked away behind a tattoo shop</title>

Hideaway Coffeeshop opened in Wahiawā at the beginning of May. Business owner Steph Maldonado describes the space as a “speakeasy-like coffee shop” and features customizable drinks with housemade syrups.

This Wahiawā coffee shop is tucked away behind a tattoo shop

Higa headshot white shirt square

Sterling Higa

On Monday morning, the trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs spent 

 accusing one another of retaliation, secrecy, and filing court documents nobody approved.

One of the agency’s lawyers said a court filing by four dissenting trustees had hurt his ability to defend the agency. One of those trustees asked, twice, that the four’s own lawyer be heard as well, but the chair said no. The chair asked, more than once, who authorized the filing. The answers satisfied no one.

If you read the coverage, you learned a great deal. There was a budget fight last June between the board’s chair and its chief executive. The chief executive was placed on leave in September. By November she was suing the agency and its trustees, claiming her removal was retaliation.

A judge let four trustees hire their own lawyer in April. A unanimous board voted in May to seek mediation. This was upended weeks later when the dissenting trustees filed a court document siding largely with the woman suing them. Civil Beat’s 

Now try to answer one simple question: why did those four trustees hire their own lawyer? The news offers a paraphrase — they felt their views were not being represented. Represented by whom? Against what risk? Were they defending themselves, or the ousted executive, or some idea of what the agency owes its beneficiaries?

The article cannot say. Not because the reporter failed, but because 1,800 words cannot hold one year of drama, seven months of litigation, nine trustees, and a stack of dueling filings.

The four trustees’ account is available in writing. The disputed filing runs 42 pages and cost $4.31 to download from the state courts. The record is public, yet almost nobody will read it — not from laziness, but because a person who paid that toll on every public dispute would have time for nothing else. So everything most of us will ever know about this issue must pass through a narrow opening.

This is how we meet nearly every public matter. We come to Red Hill this way, and to the rail, and to the zoning fight down the road. We arrive in chapter twelve of a novel that began before we started paying attention, and someone hands us a synopsis — written, usually, by a person who also arrived late.

The first to plead his case seems right, the proverb says, until another comes and examines him. A news article is somebody’s opening statement, or several opening statements stitched together. The cross-examination comes later, if it comes at all. It comes in follow-up stories, in depositions, and in records requests nobody reads. The news article is not lying to you. It is simply the latest voice in an ongoing proceeding.

The tempting response is to fire the narrator. Many conservatives have concluded that the mainstream press cannot be trusted, so they switched to friendlier news outlets, taking the new synopsis on the same faith they once gave the old one. But that is not skepticism. The man who trades one narrator for another has not become harder to fool. His progressive neighbor, who treats a single outlet’s account as the complete record, is making the same mistake. Different congregations, same habit.

Consider the people we might expect to be immune. New members of major public boards routinely inherit contested case files that run hundreds of pages, covering litigation that began years before their terms. They read every document, consult with counsel, and then the law obliges them to decide. But they are always entering halfway through.

And yet we still have to judge. The voter votes for OHA trustees this fall whether or not he has read the court filings. The juror must return a verdict. The board member makes a decision with the case file still heavy in her lap. “It’s complicated” is not a verdict any court will accept, and the ballot has no box for it.

So the question is not whether to judge with partial knowledge — we have to. The question is how to judge well.

Hear the other side before you settle anything, even when the first side sounded complete. Hear at least two witnesses. Keep what is alleged and what is proven in separate drawers, and check which drawer you are pulling from before you repeat the news at dinner. Where the record lets you wait, wait.

These are old disciplines, older than newspapers. Courts adopted them for a humbling reason: our law assumes that the judge cannot see everything. Our whole system of trials is built on that admission. No single narrator, however honest, tells the whole story.

There is one Judge who has read every file to the last page, who sat in every executive session, and who requires no cross-examination. His position is filled, and none of us should aspire to it. Our verdicts are drafts at best. Knowing this is not a reason to stop judging. It is the only way to do it well.

Lawsuit i Stock 2259375275

<title>What 1,800 words can’t tell you about the OHA lawsuit</title>

The disputed court filing at the center of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs’ board war runs 42 pages and costs $4.31 to download. Almost no one will ever read it. ASD opinion columnist Sterling Higa on why we meet every public story halfway through — and why we have to judge anyway.

What 1,800 words can’t tell you about the OHA lawsuit

Christian Shimabuku Headshot

Christian Shimabuku

Sports

Wai‘anae's Max Holloway signed the dotted line for perhaps the most prominent bout of his career, the fight agreement came with a new wrinkle.

worldwide superstar Conor McGregor (22-6) in the main event of UFC 329 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on Saturday, July 11. The fight will take place at welterweight, Holloway's first foray into the 170-pound weight class. 

Of Holloway's 32 UFC fights, the vast majority have taken place in the 145-pound featherweight division. Holloway's 14 straight featherweight wins remain a UFC record, and he reigned as the division's champion from 2016 to 2019. In 2024, he moved up to the 155-pound lightweight division, winning the UFC's BMF belt against current lightweight champ Justin Gaethje. 

 via decision to Charles Oliveira in March, he got the fight he's coveted for the last 13 years. Back in 2013 when Holloway was 21 and McGregor was 25, the two fought at UFC Fight Night 26 in Boston, with McGregor taking the victory via decision. The two separately ascended to superstardom in the sport. 

As Holloway prepared for one of the biggest opportunities of his career leading up to July 11, one of the names he turned to was his trusty strength and conditioning coach, Darin Yap. 

Yap, the founder and owner of Honolulu-based Tactical Strength, believes that even though Holloway is making a 15-pound leap from his last fight, it's important that he doesn't lose his best qualities in the new weight class. Known for his striking volume and stamina, Holloway's 3,681 significant strikes 

"We always try to be true to who Max is as a fighter, meaning that he's going to utilize his footwork, he's going to bring pressure, he's going to throw a lot of punches," Yap told Aloha State Daily in a recent interview. "The footwork, the hand speed, the endurance, those three things always have to remain constant, because that's who he is as a fighter. Every fight, regardless of the opponent, we always start making sure that we have taken care of those things, and then based on the weight class and who the opponent is, we can make adjustments from there. 

"He gained a little bit of weight so that he could be a little bit more durable, and then the weight always helps with the punching power, too. But like I said, we never want to sacrifice our speed and our endurance for size."

During a rigorous camp, Holloway steadily added to his frame in preparation for the welterweight bout. 

"We're trying to add a little bit of size slowly. I think the biggest difference for Max (at welterweight) is that he can eat more, and then him having that Polynesian frame as he starts to eat more, you can really see that body start to fill out," Yap said. "I know he's definitely a lot more happy when he's fighting at 170 but I think other than that, I don't think there's a whole lot of difference between (camps at 155 vs. 170)."

Coincidentally, McGregor held featherweight and lightweight belts with the UFC during his time with the organization. But unlike Holloway, McGregor has fought at welterweight three times. McGregor's return is heavily anticipated due to the fact that he hasn't fought since fracturing his leg in a July 10, 2021 loss to Dustin Poirier. Excitement for McGregor's return is prevalent, and the Holloway camp is no different. 

"The level of excitement is through the roof," Yap said. "We wanted this, we were hoping for it. We're really excited, but we're trying to contain ourselves, because there's always a chance that Conor doesn't show up. Come fight night, when both of those guys are in, at least we'll know Conor showed up, and that'll be some validation."

Yap, a 1995 ‘Aiea High School graduate, works with a bevy of athletes across different sports, genders and levels during his 65-hour work weeks. Clients range from the youth level all the way to the pros, such as Holloway and Cleveland Guardians standout pitcher 

Holloway and Yap first met when Holloway was a wiry teenager that had yet to sign with the UFC. Yap's first experience training Holloway ahead of a fight was in 2011, back when Holloway outlasted local veteran Harris Sarmiento at an X-1 event at the Neal S. Blaisdell Center. Yap says it didn't take long for him to realize he was working with someone special in Holloway. Fifteen years later, Holloway continues to cement himself as one of the greats in the sport.

"I'm just completely grateful to him that he allowed me to come on this journey with him. It's been such a great experience. He knows that it's just pure gratitude on my part," Yap said. "I'm just super happy to help him anywhere, any way I can, and just happy to be on this blessed express with him."

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Learning a new language

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Social Media & Marketing Manager

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