Following the UFC’s decision to strip Conor McGregor of his featherweight championship we have yet to hear from the brash Irishman. UFC president, Dana White, however, has broken his silence and explained ‘The Notorious’ no longer has the belt.
Conor McGregor made history at UFC 205 when he defeated Eddie Alvarez to become the new UFC lightweight champion and the first simultaneous two-weight champion in the promotion’s history.
That lasted a mere two weeks as last weekend during the UFC Fight Night 101 broadcast, Jon Anik announced that McGregor had relinquished the featherweight and José champion would be promoted from interim to undisputed champion. In addition, Max Holloway and Anthony Pettis would fight for the new interim 145lb belt at UFC 206.
While McGregor has yet to make any comment, UFC president Dana White spoke to Yahoo Sports and explained the reasoning behind this decision.
“Look, I let Conor fight (Nate) Diaz and then, I let him fight Diaz again,” White said. “Then, there was the whole 155lb thing I let him do. But at the end of the day, him doing that tied up the division for a year. There’s a logjam there and a lot of guys were (angry). This was my way to fix the logjam. I wanted Aldo to fight Holloway for the belt, but he needed more time. So I looked at it and I said, well, it makes sense to make Aldo the champion and then have Holloway and Pettis fight for the interim title, and when José’s ready, barring any crazy injuries, the winner can fight him.”
While McGregor hasn’t commented on the situation, his head coach at SBG Ireland, John Kavanagh did speak out and refuted the UFC’s claim that the belt had been relinquished by McGregor and instead insinuated that it had actually been stripped in order to justify creating an interim title for the UFC 206 main event.
White denies Kavanagh’s claims and underlined the promotion’s initial comment on the situation, that McGregor was the one who made this choice.
“He’s misinformed,” White said. “Yeah, he doesn’t know all that has gone on, I guess. Do you think I just did this? This was Conor’s decision.”
