John Kavanagh was surprised, but unruffled by the UFC 223 headliner announcement.
No matter what happens in Boston, Conor McGregor will still be the UFC lightweight champion in John Kavanagh’s eyes.
The UFC have confirmed that interim champion Tony Ferguson has been booked to fight Khabib Nurmagomedov in UFC 223’s main event. If it goes ahead, it will be hands down the greatest lightweight title fight ever. Ferguson set a divisional record of 10 consecutive wins to earn the interim strap while Nurmagomedov has a pristine 25-0 record.
While these streaking 155 lbers seemed destined to collide, the universe appears to be hell bent on keeping them apart. This fight has already been booked and has subsequently fallen through three times. Here’s hoping fourth time’s the charm.
A title fight has been announced https://t.co/8yQZLE1WVX
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) January 19, 2018
Although the press release announcing the headliner suggests McGregor won’t be stripped of his strap, the UFC have been preparing to take the belt off him for a while. If he doesn’t defend in February, he will have broken Anthony Pettis’ record for longest time spent holding the belt without attempting a first defence.
Despite that unwanted record looming, John Kavanagh still sees McGregor as the true champion. The SBG head coach expanded on this view during a Facebook live interview to promote Wimp 2 Warrior.
“Without wanting to make everybody’s head explode, regardless of what way this fight is sold, I think it’s still going to be known who the champion is. I know that’s going to upset a lot of people, but there you go. That’s my opinion on it.”
“If it happens that they fight each other and if it happens it’s for the belt, they’re both going to think to themselves at night that they’ve got to beat Conor to be really seen as the champ. That’s how I see it.”
You can see the spirit drain from their faces https://t.co/VIJxOzFYXT
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) January 11, 2018
McGregor has fought just once in the UFC’s 155 lb division. The Boston headliners have a combined total of 21 UFC lightweight contests. However, Kavanagh still sees McGregor as the king of the weight class because of the manner in which he won the belt against Eddie Alvarez.
“The way Conor won that belt, he didn’t decision someone or he didn’t edge out anyone. I’ve always liked Eddie anyway. His fights are always incredible, great warrior, great person blah blah blah blah blah, but nobody can look at that fight and not say it wasn’t completely one-sided. It was not any way a close fight.”
“So Conor won that belt with an exclamation mark, with a statement. He is the champion. He is the lightweight champion and that’s that.”
That’s that, so.
