Tony Ferguson makes novel suggestion to keep lightweight division interesting while Conor McGregor is away

Tony Ferguson kept his head down after beating Rafael Dos Anjos but now they can't stop him from gabbing.

The UFC is throwing around plenty of interim belts so why not one more? Ferguson believes he has put in the time and got the victories necessary to earn at shot at the lightweight belt but that won't happen until the middle of next year at the earliest. Newly crowned 155lbs champions Conor McGregor is likely to be out of the UFC picture until his partner gives birth to the couple's first child. The UFC stripped the featherweight belt off McGregor and awarded it, outright, to José Aldo. They also created an interim fight between Anthony Pettis and eventual winner Max Holloway for UFC 206 and Ferguson wants them to follow suit in the lightweight division. He told Submission Radio:

"I'm ready to sign on the dotted line and I think the UFC knows that. "And I think it needs to be for that belt. I don't think... it needs to be for that belt, damn it. Straight up, I've been putting in my time, I've been putting in my numbers. This is my time. "Let's get some heat going for this thing. Let's do this for The Ultimate Fighter. We can do Team Khabib versus Team Ferguson, that'd be dope. "Let's just throw it up for an interim belt. If he's gonna take a step out for a while then they need to throw an interim belt out there, have a champ out there and when he comes back he can be ready for that ass whooping which will be me."

The UFC did set a precedent with McGregor in taking his featherweight belt off him as he had not defended it in 11 months. In fact, while McGregor was off fighting Nate Diaz at welterweight, the promotion created an interim title for Aldo and Frankie Edgar to scrap over at UFC 200. Everyone knows the winner of Ferguson and Nurmagomedov should be next in line for McGregor but, where 'The Notorious' is concerned, nothing is certain.