Tyron Woodley is not alone in thinking that Conor McGregor should no longer be UFC featherweight champion.
There are many who believe that fighting back-to-back fights at a weight class outside of which a fighter holds a belt, holding up the title picture, is grounds to have that title taken away.
McGregor fights Nate Diaz at welterweight for the second time in the main event of UFC 202 next month which means that he has yet to defend the title he unified last December.
The exploits of ‘The Notorious’ at 170 lbs resulted in the need for an interim title fight between former long-time champion Jose Aldo and top contender Frankie Edgar at UFC 200.
And Tyron Woodley, who meets welterweight champion Robbie Lawler for the title next week, believes that that bout should have been contested for the undisputed championship rather than its interim iteration as, in his opinion, McGregor deserves to be stripped.
“You’ve got a repeat fight of Jose Aldo and Frankie Edgar which is very similar (to their first fight),” Woodley said on his podcast The Morning Wood Show with Deez Nuts.
“They paid more attention to freaking Conor McGregor in the stands, standing up and attention-hunting, than they did the actual fight.
“These guys should have been fighting for the actual belt. He should be stripped of his belt.
“He’s fighting at 170 lbs for the second time. What other champion do you know that still maintains a belt and in his last fight, he lost?”
McGregor is in a position where he is essentially spinning plates across two weight divisions as he is balancing rivalries with both Diaz and Aldo.
That means there is no shortage of big fights on the horizon for the Irishman and his drawing power is one of the primary reasons that he has something of a carte blanche in the UFC.
“It’s like when you have enough fans, you get some leeway and I get it,” Woodley’s co-host Din Thomas said.
“It’s not fair to everybody else but I guess I get it. It’s almost like Conor McGregor can almost do whatever he wants.
“Especially right now! If Brock (Lesnar) gets suspended, there’s no Brock. If Jon Jones gets suspended, there’s no Jon Jones. Ronda Rousey’s not coming back any time soon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NARx-2tWk0o&feature=youtu.be
“The biggest star right now is Conor McGregor and it’s like, can you really afford to piss this guy off and strip his belt?
“Does he deserve to be stripped? I don’t know, probably. But can they really do that? Can the UFC afford to do that to their biggest pay-per-view guy?”
