Conor McGregor’s date with destiny is delayed.
News of lightweight champion Rafael dos Anjos’ broken foot spread like infection through the MMA world early Tuesday morning. The fight between dos Anjos and McGregor scheduled for UFC 196 on March 5 is now off, and with it McGregor’s chance to become the first man to simultaneously hold two UFC titles in two different weight classes.
Dos Anjos will need six weeks before he can return to training, according to Yahoo Sports’ Kevin Iole. Iole quoted dos Anjos' manager, Ali Abdelaziz, saying the injury happened as the lightweight titlist was training on Friday.
"He threw a kick and the guy he was sparring with checked the kick," Abdelaziz said. "It hurt a little, but he continued to spar. After that, it began swelling badly and I called the UFC. They sent him to a doctor who said it's broken."
Perhaps the silver lining in all of this is that it could make timing perfect for the dos Anjos vs. McGregor fight to be rescheduled for UFC 200.
For now, however, we wait.
Naturally, news that dos Anjos is out touched off a feeding frenzy among UFC fighters offering to take his place. Early indications are that McGregor still wants to fight at UFC 196, and at the moment, the most likely candidates to face him appear to be Donald Cerrone, Nate Diaz or Anthony Pettis.
Each of those guys, or their representatives, have expressed interest (in their own special ways) in taking the match:
Iole confirmed that any replacement bout, if and when it materializes, will still be at 155 pounds. The possibility of an interim title, however, doesn't seem to be on the table. That means whoever McGregor ends up fighting, it won't be quite as historic as his matchup against dos Anjos.
That’s a bummer for a lot of reasons, not the least of which being that momentum for UFC 196 was just starting to build.
The introductory press conference back on January 25 was notable for how ill prepared the fight company seemed to be to promote this as a bona fide superfight. Instead, the UFC appeared content to frame it as just another main event.
McGregor criticized both the official event poster and the fact nobody thought to bring his newly won featherweight title to the presser. In the wake of those criticisms, promotion ramped up. The UFC filled the airwaves with new UFC 196 advertisements during Sunday’s Fight Night 83, highlighting McGregor and dos Anjos as well as the “champion vs. champion” storyline.
The hype job for this bout was going to be nothing compared to McGregor’s December fight against Jose Aldo at UFC 195, but at least the ball was starting to roll.
On Tuesday it was also announced that McGregor will appear on the cover of this week’s Sports Illustrated:
So, bad timing all the way around.
Now it will be a little while before McGregor attempts to add to his already considerable—if admittedly brief—UFC legacy.
It is typically against company policy to allow the champion from a given weight class to double-dip and challenge for someone else’s title. The UFC is bending its own policy to allow McGregor the chance to do it.
The only time anything like this has ever happened before was when BJ Penn jumped up in weight to fight for Georges St-Pierre’s welterweight title in 2009. Even then it was understood that if Penn defeated St-Pierre (he didn’t), he would vacate the lightweight title.
But the UFC is making an exception for McGregor, because he’s just that special. Also because so far he’s been just that lucrative for the fight company.
His interim featherweight title fight against Chad Mendes last July at UFC 189 pulled an estimated 825,000 buys on pay-per-view, and his hyped unification bout against Aldo five months later did an estimated 1.2 million (both numbers courtesy of Dave Meltzer’s ProWrestling Observer, via MMA Payout).
It’s also possible the UFC didn’t have much choice but to give McGregor exactly what he wanted in this situation. The Irishman has talked openly about his desire to hold both the 145- and 155-pound belts—a feat he first pulled off in Britain’s Cage Warriors organization in 2012—and bragged that the new contract he recently signed will be the most lucrative in UFC history.
It all added up to the impression that McGregor was consolidating more and more power within the MMA industry, and that perhaps he was calling the matchmaking shots these days. It also led to rumors that his relationship with the UFC might be on the rocks.
Still, if there’s one thing the two sides can agree on, it’s a mutual love of money, and McGregor’s fight with dos Anjos—if and when it happens—is certainly going to produce enough of that to go around.
It’s just not going to happen two weeks from now. It seems not even McGregor can rush destiny.
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