Kavanagh: UFC 'stripped' McGregor of featherweight title
As expected, there's more to Conor McGregor relinquishing his UFC featherweight title than meets the eye.
When the promotion announced over the weekend that McGregor willingly vacated one of his two championship belts, it generated skepticism given that he'd previously stated a reluctance to do so. UFC president Dana White has maintained it was never the plan for McGregor to walk around with two titles, but it doesn't sound like the fighter and company officials were on the same page when it came time to rectify the situation.
McGregor's coach, John Kavanagh, spoke to Cork's RedFM on Tuesday, and confirmed that one party was more eager to free up a title than the other.
"It was more the UFC," Kavanagh said, according to Sean Sheehan of Severe MMA. "For me personally, I was very disappointed with how they went about doing it."
Kavanagh's disappointment stemmed from the decision appearing to be motivated by the need to increase the stakes of an upcoming bout between featherweight contenders Max Holloway and Anthony Pettis at UFC 206. Holloway and Pettis were promoted to the main event after injury knocked original headliner Daniel Cormier out of his light heavyweight title defense against Anthony Johnson.
The Holloway-Pettis fight will be for an interim featherweight championship, while current interim champion Jose Aldo is now officially the undisputed champion. So, McGregor knocked Aldo out in 13 seconds last December to win a belt that he never defended, and likely never will.
"It was a very messy set of circumstances which led to doing it," Kavanagh added. "They lost a main event (at UFC 206) and then they haphazardly threw together a new main event. They felt they had to make this for a title in order for it to sell so they brought in another interim title that Jose Aldo already has and then bumped Jose Aldo up to the current undisputed champion. Which just seems ridiculous to me.
"Conor has only been 11 months since he won that title. There have been many, many examples of fighters waiting 15 months, 18 months before defending it. He's 11 months and they stripped him of it."
It's unclear what McGregor's plans were at 145 pounds, if any, but he almost certainly wouldn't have defended that belt for another six months. After knocking out lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez at UFC 205, McGregor announced he would be resting until May, as he and his partner are expecting their first child.
- With h/t to Bloody Elbow