Alessa Quizon Holloway is the wife of UFC star Max Holloway, who is defending the symbolic BMF title against former lightweight champion Charles Oliveira in the main event of UFC 326 on March 7, 2026, at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
The rematch comes more than a decade after the two first fought in 2015 and represents Holloway’s second defense of the BMF belt after beating Dustin Poirier at UFC 318 last July. He won the belt in a fight against Justin Gaethje at UFC 300.
Quizon is a professional surfer from Makaha, Hawaii, who competed on the World Surf League’s Championship Tour and performed stunt surfing in the 2011 film “Soul Surfer.” She and Holloway, who both grew up on the west side of Oahu, married in April 2022 and made headlines in August 2025 when she legally adopted his son, Rush, after a five-year custody battle.
Here’s what you need to know about Max Holloway’s wife, Alessa Quizon Holloway:
1. Alessa Quizon Holloway Is a Professional Surfer Who Was Riding Waves by Age 7 & Competing on the World Tour by Her Late Teens
Alessa Quizon was born on January 2, 1994, in Honolulu, Hawaii, and grew up in Makaha, a surf town on the west side of Oahu. She started surfing at age seven after her father, Scott Quizon, a full-time truck driver, introduced her and her older sister, Kristen, to the ocean.
“My dad taught me. Surfing’s been in my family for two or three generations now. There’s no other feeling in the world like riding a wave,” she told Into the Gloss in 2019, according to Into the Gloss.
By age 10, Alessa was competing in local contests, including the Rell Sunn Memorial, and at 12, Billabong signed her as a sponsor, according to SurferGirls.com. She joined the World Surf League and in 2015 ranked as high as No. 17 on the Women’s Championship Tour. After falling off the elite tour in 2016, she took a more relaxed approach to competition, hand-picking events rather than chasing re-qualification.
That approach paid off in 2019 when she won the Vissla Sydney Surf Pro, the biggest QS event victory of her career.
“I can’t really believe this is happening,” she said afterward. “I wasn’t really planning on chasing the QS this year and going for re-qualification but I might have to rethink that,” according to the World Surf League.
Alessa Holloway credited her parents for making her career possible.
“I give a lot [of credit] to my mom and dad,” she told the Outrigger Resorts Surfers in Residence podcast in 2023. Her father would wake up at 5 a.m. for work and still rush home every afternoon to drive his kids to the beach to practice. “There are so many sacrifices that had to be done. At the time, I was so oblivious,” according to Outrigger Resorts.
She attended Waianae High School but ultimately got her GED instead of graduating so she could focus on surfing full-time. “One thing that was really tough for me growing up and wanting to be a professional surfer was managing it along with school,” she said, according to SurferGirls.com.
2. She Performed Stunt Surfing in the Movie ‘Soul Surfer’ When She Was 17
Before she was known as a UFC wife, Alessa Quizon had a Hollywood credit. At age 17, she was part of the stunt surfing team for “Soul Surfer,” the 2011 biographical film about Bethany Hamilton, the Hawaiian surfer who lost her arm in a shark attack and returned to professional competition, according to IMDB.
The film, which starred AnnaSophia Robb, Dennis Quaid and Helen Hunt, was shot in Hawaii in early 2010, and multiple professional surfers from Hawaii were recruited for the water sequences. Hamilton herself performed the one-armed surfing stunts, while other surfers, including Alessa, filled in for various competition and ocean scenes, according to Wikipedia. “Soul Surfer” earned $47 million at the box office and received an A+ CinemaScore from audiences.
Quizon’s approach to surfing, which she described as methodical rather than reckless, reflected the preparation needed for that kind of stunt work. “I don’t just throw myself into a wave and let myself get pounded,” she told Teen Vogue. “I’ll study it, because it’s all about preparation. Then, when I feel like I can handle the wave, I throw myself out there,” according to SurferGirls.com.
3. Alessa & Max Holloway Are Both From Waianae & Got Engaged Just 9 Months After They Started Dating
Alessa Quizon and Max Holloway confirmed their relationship on Instagram in February 2020, according to the UFC. Both are from Waianae, on the west side of Oahu, and the shared roots were meaningful to Holloway. “It was a match made in heaven you know, two pro athletes from the same town, making it,” he told Sportsmanor in 2022.
The relationship moved quickly. On November 17, 2020, Holloway proposed during a beachside outing and announced the engagement on social media with “She said yes.” Alessa added, “Truly blessed.” The engagement came just nine months after they started dating.
The couple were married on April 16, 2022, at the Lanikuhonua Cultural Institute in Ko Olina, Hawaii, in a beachside ceremony with family and friends in attendance, including Rush, according to their social media pages. Holloway shared footage on Instagram that showed him tearing up as Alessa walked down the aisle. “I get to spend the rest of my life with my soulmate,” he wrote. Alessa captioned her own photos: “I married the love of my life.”
In an interview with Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour, Holloway credited Alessa with transforming his daily life. “My wife made my life easier. She took a lot of things off my plate and she just makes it easier. So, all I got to do is go there, focus, do my thing,” Holloway said.
Before dating Holloway, Alessa was previously engaged to Brazilian pro surfer Caio Ibelli. The two split in February 2020, the same month she and Holloway went public. Ibelli was referenced in her 2019 Sydney Surf Pro victory interview, where she noted she had “mainly” come to Australia to support him, according to the World Surf League.
4. Max Holloway’s Wife Alessa Quizon Holloway Legally Adopted Max’s Son Rush After a 5-Year Custody Battle
In August 2025, Alessa Quizon Holloway legally became the mother of Max Holloway’s son, Rush, who was born on January 4, 2012. The adoption came after a five-year custody battle between Max and his first wife, Kaimana Pa’aluhi, whom he married in 2012, separated from in 2014 and divorced in 2017.
Holloway shared the news in a rare personal Instagram post. “Usually I don’t share much about my personal life, but this I want to share. I just won the hardest fight of my life,” he wrote. “Rush has voiced many times on how he wanted Alessa to adopt him. Yesterday, Alessa got to adopt Rush as his legal mother.”
Holloway revealed that when Rush was just seven years old, he asked permission to call Alessa “Mom.” “She was never a mom, she don’t have no kids. She don’t know what it is, but she just jumped right in head first and did it, and she made Rush feel so loved,” Holloway said. “This kid, when he was seven years old, he came up to me and he’s like ‘Dad, can I call Auntie Alessa Mom?’ … I knew she was the one right when he asked me,” according to Heavy.
In her own post, Alessa addressed Rush directly: “You never deserved to be neglected and have to pick up those broken pieces on your own. You never deserved to be heartbroken. You never deserved that kind of love. That’s why I promise to always be there for you.”
The experience deepened Alessa’s appreciation for her own mother. On Mother’s Day, she wrote on Instagram: “Thank you for raising and loving me as a mother should. Realizing this as [I’ve] gotten older, some kids grew up without having this promise.”
Rush Holloway surfs and plays baseball, and has been a regular presence at his father’s fights. One of his most memorable appearances came in 2019 after Dustin Poirier defeated Holloway at UFC 236 for the interim lightweight title, when Poirier comforted the then-seven-year-old Rush in a moment that went viral.
5. Alessa Holloway Grew Up Around Violence in Waianae & Has Spoken About the Challenges of Life on Oahu’s West Side
Both Alessa and Max Holloway grew up in Waianae, a community on the west side of Oahu that has a reputation for being rough. They attended the same high school, Waianae High, though at different times.
Alessa has been candid about what it was like growing up there. “[People] won’t want to visit my home because they think they’ll get robbed … which could possibly happen,” she laughed in a 2013 interview with Surfer magazine. She described witnessing violence in high school, including a riot where she was maced by police. She normally tried to stay out of the trouble, but seeing police break up fights was a regular occurrence.
In July 2020, Alessa’s father Scott suffered a stroke, and she shared her fear publicly on Instagram. “It was one of the most painful experiences I had to go through,” she wrote, pairing her caption with a video of her dad surfing.
The family remains grounded in Hawaii. Alessa’s Instagram bio reads: “Max and Rush” followed by a heart, and describes her as a “professional surfer from Makaha, Hawaii.” She has more than 846,000 followers on the platform. On Saturday night, she will be in Las Vegas as Holloway defends the BMF belt against Charles Oliveira at UFC 326, according to the UFC.
Alessa Quizon Holloway, Max Holloway’s Wife: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know