With the added muscle mass, a weight cutback to 145lbs would be significantly more difficult for Conor McGregor.
Could he do it? Almost certainly.
Will he do it? That’s up for debate.
McGregor fights at welterweight for the second consecutive time when he meets Nate Diaz at UFC 200, a rematch of the UFC 196 main event which culminated in the first UFC defeat for ‘The Notorious.’
McGregor’s insistence at competing at 170lbs once more has forced the UFC to put together an interim featherweight title fight between Frankie Edgar and former champion Jose Aldo, with a unification match-up against McGregor next up for the winner.
Max Holloway, who is something of an overlooked figure at 145 lbs, believes that unification bout may never come to fruition because, in his opinion, McGregor isn’t going to drop back down to featherweight.
“At the end of the day, who knows if he comes back to 145?” Honestly, my feeling, I don’t think that he does,” Holloway told MMA Fighting.
“I think that 155 lbs fight (the postponed fight against Rafael dos Anjos) was already saying that he just wanted to be at 155, hold the two titles, say that he did it, then just move up full-time. That’s what I thought he was thinking of doing, because he’s a big guy. All you hear of him is struggling to make 145. This guy struggles. You see, all he does is [cut weight] all week long.
“So he was going to go up sooner or later. Then you see him getting bigger every fight. … His last fight, he was a big boy. And he already had a hard time cutting. [With him] going back up to 170, I think he’s going to gain weight and have to cut a little, just trying to compete at that level, at 170. So who knows if he’s coming down?”
Holloway is the only man to have ever taken McGregor the distance in the Irishman’s professional career and the Hawaiian has gone 8-0 since dropping the decision loss to McGregor in 2013.
That’s left Holloway in fourth spot in the UFC’s official featherweight rankings but he’s at something of a loss with McGregor’s decision to persist at welterweight and the fact that both Aldo and Edgar have been paired up together.
“I just feel left out because my last fight wasn’t a finish,” Holloway added.
“When I was finishing guys, the media was on me like crazy. Then I have this one decision fight against a guy (Jeremy Stephens) who, ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone, Anthony Pettis, these guys couldn’t finish him.
“And then [people are] looking at me, asking me how the hell I didn’t finish him. It’s like, look at these guys. These guys are beasts and they had a hard time with the fight too. They couldn’t finish him either.
