  Bottom-up holographic models of QCD, inspired by the AdS/CFT correspondence,
have shown a remarkable degree of phenomenological success. However, they rely
on a number of bold assumptions. We investigate the reliability of one of the
key assumptions, which involves matching the parameters of these models to QCD
at high 4D momentum $q^2$ and renormalization scale $\mu^2$. We show that this
leads to phenomenological and theoretical inconsistencies for scale-dependent
quantities such as $\bra \bar{q}q\ket$
