“UFC has been pushing to strip McGregor of the 145 title for some time. Legally, they can. Would be interesting to see how he responds…”
Those were the words of Ariel Helwani earlier on Saturday and they look like they will loom over UFC 206 like an eerie shadow.
Nobody will deny Conor McGregor his dues. They might’ve taken their time to get him his second belt in New York but his achievements will never be lessened. It does, however, seem that the Dubliner will no longer have the option of defending his featherweight title.
After disposing of Jose Aldo last year, The Notorious moved straight on. He went up to lightweight to take on Rafael dos Anjos but injury suspended that event. So McGregor went even further up the weight classes to face off with Nate Diaz – twice – and his return to 145 lbs looked increasingly less likely as he found his feet and then, naturally, world domination with more meat on his body.
Dana White has had to act though. Jose Aldo since beat Frankie Edgar – back in July – to be crowned the interim featherweight champion in McGregor’s absence from the 145 ranks but now a new interim title fight is being billed for UFC 206.
According to MMAFighting, Max Holloway v Anthony Pettis for the interim featherweight belt is the new headline event for UFC 206.
The event is billed for two weeks time on December 10 and is being rescued with Pettis-Holloway after Daniel Cormier withdrew from his fight with Anthony Johnson.
What it means is that, if the UFC are preparing the way for a new interim champion, then Jose Aldo would become featherweight champ again – automatically – and McGregor would be stripped of his belt. It would then be down to Aldo and the winner at UFC 206 to fight for the unification of the belt.
Let’s see how the history-maker reacts to this.
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