Conor McGregor won the UFC featherweight title in December, so he's three months into his reign, and yet there is little clarity on whether he has any intention of returning there to defend the belt.
His coach is on record as not wanting him to continue making the hellacious weight cut, and even UFC President Dana White has voiced doubts about it. More recently, a rumor from MMA Fighting's Ariel Helwani suggested that McGregor would move straight to a welterweight rematch with Nate Diaz at UFC 200.
To which we respond, "...interesting." The two undoubtedly put on a great show—and generated a monster buyrate—the first time around, but what exactly does McGregor owe his division? That is the question my colleague Jonathan Snowden and I discuss.
Mike Chiappetta: Frankie Edgar's frustration is palpable, and Jose Aldo's anger is intensifying, but they are hardly the only ones to object to what is happening, and for good reason: Until McGregor makes a decision, the division is simply spinning its wheels.
McGregor's focus has been in designing the biggest-money fight, which is great business, but there are other careers in play, too.
While selfishness is actually a necessary trait in a sport like MMA, with its few guarantees, it must also be understood that there is an implicit agreement in winning the belt that you will defend it.
At this moment, McGregor doesn't seem to have any intention of doing that. He's made barely a mention of Edgar or Aldo and seems to wield his shiny gold belt as just another accoutrement to pair with his collection of finely tailored suits.
For him, it's essentially a prop, but for the featherweights, it remains a symbol of frustration as an object within sight but beyond grasp.
Jonathan Snowden: The 24-hour news cycle has changed the way we consider the world around us. Things move so quickly that essential truths can be lost in the churn.
Here is one: It's only been three months since McGregor won the featherweight title from Aldo in such epic fashion, a 13-second knockout for the ages. It feels like eons ago, but only two UFC pay-per-views have gone by since McGregor shook up the sport—one of them headlined by the Irishman himself.
The premise at work here, that McGregor is somehow paralyzing the featherweight division, doesn't hold up to any reasonable level of scrutiny. In the six years in which Aldo was Zuffa's champion, he never defended his title more than two times per annum. Twice he fought just once in a calendar year.
There's no reason to think McGregor can't meet that standard. So why not run the Diaz fight back while it is still fresh in people's minds and blowing up their search engines?
Thanks to his win over McGregor, people care about Diaz in a way they've never cared about Frankie Edgar. Isn't that more important, when creating a spectacle like UFC 200 is bound to be, than the sanctity of a championship belt that has never caught the public's eye?
Chiappetta: In a normal situation, it is true that three months is not so long into a reign that we should be demanding some activity, but this is no normal situation. In this one, McGregor hasn't even signaled his intent to fight at 145.
To go macro for a moment, whatever mini-backlash McGregor is facing is also an indirect smack at the UFC. The problem is not that McGregor is taking control of his destiny. It is that nearly everyone else has such little say in directing their own futures.
In nearly every other sport, the participants know exactly what they need to do to reach a championship. The path, while arduous, is defined.
But in the UFC, there is no clear road.
Edgar, for example, has won five straight fights. And by the way, in the last of those, he knocked out Chad Mendes faster than even McGregor did. But what does Edgar need to do to challenge for the belt? Win one more fight? Two? Just wait a few months? He has no idea, and with such short career windows, who can't understand his frustration?
It is true that McGregor has time to get in a title defense by the end of the year if he so chooses, but if he wants to do it, what is stopping the UFC from offering him a bout agreement for a fight later this year and him from signing it?
Nothing. Instead, he wants to keep his options open, and the UFC does, too.
I fully admit that the McGregor-Diaz rematch would be bigger than a bout with Edgar or Aldo. But we can acknowledge that and even schedule it while offering the athletes in the featherweight division the respect of some clarity.
Snowden: In the old days, there was a definitive route to MMA glory. Each event featured a one-night tournament. The winner walked away with an oversized check and a place in history.
That era, as you rightly point out, is long gone. In 2016, a title shot is determined by some strange alchemy, a mixture of business and sporting considerations only the UFC inner circle can truly understand.
Edgar, who twice fought for a UFC title immediately following a loss in the Octagon, is a man who has seen both sides of this coin. He's been the beneficiary of questionable title shots and, here, a potential victim of circumstance.
It's hard to feel too sorry for him, specifically, even while recognizing a potential institutional problem.
But, to me at least, MMA has never been about title belts or baubles. It's about two athletes proving something to themselves—and each other. The joy is in the competition. The stakes, including health and wealth, are bigger than a place in the agate print of history.
This is prizefighting. If a championship makes the prize a little larger, good for the fighters. That's literally the name of the game. If not? Well, maybe that title means less than we think it does.
As an athlete, and as a man, a Diaz fight has to be McGregor's priority. Diaz took something from him in the second round of their first fight: The swagger that defined McGregor's public persona disappeared in the time it took to tap out.
McGregor may go through the motions in future fights. If he did fight Edgar, he'd do his best to be "Conor McGregor." But he needs to prove something to himself for it to resonate in a way fans will recognize as authentic.
A championship belt matters. But dignity and pride matter more.
Chiappetta: And what if he loses again? Does he go back for a third fight and continue keeping his division on eternal hold?
The thing is the championship does make the prize a little larger. Titleholders are almost exclusively the only ones on the roster who can contractually demand a piece of the pay-per-view revenue. As long as the featherweight belt remains in McGregor's possession, the rest of the division's contenders have no chance of earning and playing that bargaining chip.
That's something. That's significant. And as long as McGregor is noncommittal toward his featherweight obligations, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is removed.
And that's the thing. This is prizefighting. Those big paydays almost exclusively run parallel to championship fights, but when the titleholder is missing in action, what exactly is the target for the rest of the men in the division?
The title's importance is fluid. It changes within the context of the division. And now it matters more than ever. McGregor is easily the most famous man to hold it. So who's to say that he couldn't help make Edgar or Aldo a star, too? He just had a huge buyrate with Aldo a few months ago, so he could do it again.
He doesn't have to fight again at 145 pounds, but if—as he claimed before UFC 196—belts don't matter to him, he should give it up and let the division move on and find its way without him.
McGregor's conundrum is whether he should meet the champion's obligation to defend the belt or continue seeking bigger-money fights above 145. He doesn't owe the division a defense, but he does owe it a decision (and soon): Either defend or vacate.
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