“If someone says that they are the baddest badass in the room, I’ll be the first to stand up and beg to differ,” – Nate Diaz, UFC 202 Bad Blood.
You’ve got to hand it to Conor McGregor. With just about every fighter from featherweight to welterweight looking to get a piece of him following his sensational performance at UFC 205, the Notorious knows how to wind up everyone waiting impatiently in that Red Panty Night queue.
In the build-up to his super fight against Eddie Alvarez in New York, McGregor let everyone know how he was going to cap off 2016. Once that main event was over, he’d have a belt across either shoulder as dual champion and then he would drop that big announcement that he had been teasing for weeks.
And that’s exactly how it all played out.
McGregor’s history-making knockout of Eddie Alvarez only made the target on his back grow exponentially, but in the post-fight press conference he dropped the news that he would be taking some time off from fighting as his girlfriend is expecting a baby.
He added that two things will have to happen before he steps back into the Octagon – the UFC’s new owners will need to talk business with him and he wants a bigger slice of the company’s pie in the form of equity. Until that happens, it looks like all the top 145 and 155 lb contenders will have to slug it out among themselves to decide who deserves the next Red Panty Night.
He let the entire roster know where they stand with a social media post on Wednesday evening. The timing of the tweet was interesting as it came just a few hours before top lightweight contender Khabib Nurmagomedov revealed the cheeky Twitter DM he sent to the Notorious.
Must have struck a nerve.
Hello id like to order some competition please I don't have any pic.twitter.com/cocgW4uwsb
— Conor McGregor (@TheNotoriousMMA) November 23, 2016
If The Eagle took issue with it, you could bet your bottom dollar that the only man to defeat McGregor inside the UFC’s Octagon was going to get in on the action too.
One half of Stockton’s proudest fighting sons, Nate Diaz, was quick to remind everyone that McGregor hasn’t steamrolled every opponent he’s ever faced in the world’s largest MMA promotion.
Diaz, of course, finished McGregor in UFC 196’s headline act forcing the tap with a rear-naked choke in the second round after outlanding McGregor throughout the course of the fight. However, McGregor got his revenge at UFC 202 by defeating Diaz via majority decision. With the series tied at one apiece, it sets things up perfectly for a trilogy fight which we have no doubt Diaz was pushing for with this post.
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