Conor McGregor remains mum on the UFC's decision to strip him of the featherweight championship, but that hasn't stopped him from sending a message.
It has been five days since the fight company announced during last Saturday’s Fight Night 101 that McGregor was “relinquishing” the 145-pound title. This week, the fighter's first public action in the wake of that move can only be read as one of chest-thumping defiance.
According to multiple reports out Thursday, McGregor filed for and received a boxing license in the state of California. While we don't yet know exactly what he hopes to do with it, the message is clear: This is a guy who is going to move forward, with or without the UFC.
That fact should weigh heavy on the minds of executives at UFC headquarters as the weekend approaches. Truth is, though, even if the fight company's biggest star never broadens his horizons beyond the Octagon's chain-link walls, he's going to continue to hold the winning hand in future negotiations.
As McGregor himself continues to keep a fairly low profile, his proxies are at work making public arguments on his behalf.
Retired Irish fighter Cathal Pendred added his voice Tuesday to the public chorus wondering if the UFC stripped McGregor of the title out of sheer convenience.
The organization was in a tough spot, after all, when light heavyweight champ Daniel Cormier dropped out of a scheduled rematch with Anthony Johnson in the main event of next month’s UFC 206.
Seemingly in response, the UFC moved quickly to free up McGregor’s belt and install an interim featherweight title match between Max Holloway and Anthony Pettis as that event’s new headliner.
As Pendred pointed out, those circumstances make stripping McGregor seem somewhat less than justifiable:
Longtime McGregor coach John Kavanagh also hasn’t held his tongue, telling Irish radio station Red FM he was “very disappointed” with the UFC’s choice to relieve its first-ever two-division champion of half his gold.
"It was a very messy set of circumstances ...," Kavanagh said, via SevereMMA’s Sean Sheehan. "I thought it was very shortsighted by the UFC how they went about doing it."
In the eternal give and take that is McGregor’s relationship with his fight company bosses, this is certainly an important signpost. On Thursday, Kavanagh posted a tweet that makes it sound as though things are only going to get more interesting from here:
Certainly, as we await word from the man himself—sure to be as blistering as every other missive he’s authored since rising to international prominence in 2013—it’s worth wondering whether the UFC has once again overplayed its ace-in-the-hole.
Stripping one of McGregor’s titles might sting him in the short term, but in the big picture it may well play right into his hands.
For now, all it does is open up a whole new line of rhetoric for McGregor to exploit if and when he returns to the Octagon sometime next year.
Up to this point, the bombastic Irishman has had to be somewhat cagey about whether he would ever return to the featherweight division. We’ve known all along the weight cut is difficult for him and understood that his most lucrative potential matchups existed in heavier divisions.
But becoming the organization’s first two-division champion—thereby re-creating a feat he first accomplished in Cage Warriors back in 2012—was always an important part of McGregor’s personal vision quest. He had to at least pretend he’d one day return to the 145-pound fold in order to accomplish it.
Now that he has and now that the UFC has taken that accomplishment away from him, is there any doubt he’ll find a way to spin it in his own favor?
Is there any chance he doesn’t continue to parade around in public with two title belts and loudly proclaim himself the rightful king of both divisions?
Is there any chance he doesn’t use this to make even more headlines than before?
No, the only thing you’ve done here is give McGregor a whole new set of hot takes to unleash on overmatched opponents in interviews and at press conferences.
In addition to that, losing the featherweight title will likely only endear McGregor even more to his already adoring fanbase.
In the past, critics could make the case that he’d been protected by the UFC during his rise to contention in the 145-pound division. He’d faced largely advantageous matchups leading up to his championship clashes with Jose Aldo at UFC 194 and later Eddie Alvarez at UFC 205.
Detractors could also make the easy case that McGregor had been afforded opportunities and luxuries he didn’t deserve. The fact that he rolled into a 155-pound title fight against Alvarez in his very first fight in the UFC lightweight division was decried by some, who shouted that the promotion was suspending all its own rules in order to milk its cash cow for all it was worth.
Now those tables may have turned.
At this point, the company has very publicly and perhaps unjustifiably wronged McGregor. In so doing, UFC brass gave him a singular opportunity to shift his public image from spoiled rich guy to championship martyr.
We saw Jon Jones briefly get a bump in public opinion after the UFC stripped him of his light heavyweight title and installed Cormier in his place. Cormier has been nothing but an upstanding good guy since coming to the Octagon in 2013, but his loss to Jones at UFC 182 was enough for many people to regard him as an unworthy champion.
Meanwhile, Jones—whose personal infraction was far worse than anything McGregor has done, mind you—was viewed as the rightful champ, unfairly deposed by the UFC.
Ironically, and perhaps most importantly, it could be that stripping McGregor of the 145-pound title makes an eventual return to featherweight both more likely and more lucrative for him.
Up until now, there’s been no good reason for him to return to the lighter weight to defend his belt. He’d already cut a swath through the division and then knocked out Aldo in 13 seconds during their highly anticipated grudge match.
If anything, going back there seemed like an unnecessary risk for McGregor.
Aldo has been outspoken in his desire for a rematch, but it always felt gratuitous—right up to the moment the UFC took away McGregor’s belt and handed it back to the 30-year-old Brazilian.
Suddenly, a second fight between McGregor and Aldo makes more sense and comes with a built-in and easily promotable storyline. No longer would it merely be about Aldo’s desire to undo the “fluke” of their first fight. Now it would be about McGregor coming back to reclaim the title most believe still rightfully belongs to him.
It would be about righting a wrong.
That could sell—perhaps as well or better than any of the potential matchups for McGregor when he returns next year.
In a weird way, by putting Aldo in the same unenviable position as Cormier, the UFC may have put him back in the mix as a potential future opponent for McGregor.
Assuming Aldo can beat the winner of Holloway vs. Pettis—perhaps a big assumption—it could push him one step closer to sewing up that second fight with McGregor he’s been so desperate to get.
Even if McGregor won’t meet him back in the featherweight division, Aldo could move up to lightweight and challenge him there.
That would give the UFC an unprecedented opportunity to book a second champion vs. champion superfight involving McGregor. Despite the fact he already beat Aldo, it would be bolstered by the added intrigue of the UFC stripping McGregor and giving the featherweight title back to a man he’d already beaten.
After all this, maybe that fight sells again.
It certainly gives McGregor more ammunition with which to renew their feud—if he sees fit.
With or without two titles, however, McGregor will continue to be the most powerful negotiator the UFC has ever known.
Add a potential legal fight and the possibility of a big-money boxing match to the table, and it's clear McGregor is already stockpiling ammunition for his next contract battle.
It’s possible in its scramble to save UFC 206, the company just gave him even more options, both in and out of the UFC.
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