Rafael dos Anjos is still hoping to get a fight with Conor McGregor in the future.
Dos Anjos was supposed to defend his lightweight title against McGregor at UFC 196 back in March 2016 only for injury to rule him out of the fight.
McGregor would go on to face Nate Diaz in a pair of fights while “RDA” eventually returned to action and lost his title to Eddie Alvarez which set the latter up to face the Irishman instead.
There was later talk of an interim welterweight title fight between Dos Anjos and McGregor in 2018 only for it to not come to fruition either.
But now that Dos Anjos is back in the top 10 of the lightweight division, he feels a matchup with McGregor is always possible and one that will make sense given their history.
“He (McGregor) picks his fights, and one with me will always make sense,” dos Anjos told Ag Fight (via Bloody Elbow). “It was meant to happen once and it didn’t. Now that the pieces are moving again in the division, I think there’s a big chance of it happening.
“He has other options, though, like a trilogy with Nate Diaz or Dustin Poirier. He’s ahead of me in the rankings. Our clash is even closer now.”
It’s certainly a fight that can happen in the future. But for now, McGregor seems eager to avenge his recent defeat to Poirier last month in a potential trilogy fight.
And as far as their rematch went, Dos Anjos believes Poirier had a good game plan which also showed a clear path to victory against the former double champion.
“Poirier had a good game plan,” Dos Anjos added. “He didn’t go out there to just strike. Right off the bat he took Conor down and that confused him. Conor is an excellent fighter, he has great boxing. He’s very technical, but he can’t make adjustments in the middle of a fight. If the fight doesn’t go down the way he imagined, he gets lost. He doesn’t deal well with getting hit. When he takes a punch, he makes it noticeable right away.
“He’s not in a good moment, but a fight is a fight. Fighters are all about motivation. Let’s see if he can take advantage of his bad moment to get focused, analyze what went wrong and come back strong.”
Do you think we’ll ever see Dos Anjos and McGregor collide?