As part of the build-up to the UFC 223 pay-per-view event, the talk about who the real lightweight champion would be was heavily discussed.
The promotion would not really say if this fight would be for the actual lightweight title or for the interim title that Tony Ferguson held. We had an actual champion, but he had not defended it in over 500 days, and that was Conor McGregor.
McGregor has not been seen in the Octagon since at UFC 205 when he won the lightweight title from Eddie Alvarez. McGregor then fought in a boxing match with Floyd Mayweather.
This wouldn’t be the first time that the promotion has stripped their biggest PPV draw of a title.
If you recall, he was stripped of the featherweight title shortly after beating Eddie Alvarez to become a two-division champ at UFC 205.
The reason to strip McGregor was to make the lightweight showdown between interim champion Tony Ferguson and Khabib Nurmagomedov legitimate for the strap.
Then we had all of the drama with the main event of UFC 223 that saw Ferguson pull out then UFC featherweight champion Max Holloway.
The promotion offered the fight to former lightweight champion Anthony Pettis and Paul Felder to fight Nurmagomedov on short notice, but that was able to be finalized. Then Al Iaquinta was offered the fight, and he took it.
As seen in the main event of the UFC 223 pay-per-view event on Saturday night (April 8th, 2018) at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, Nurmagomedov put on a dominant performance against Iaquinta and won the fight by decision to become the new lightweight champion.
With all the highlights of that sage, UFC President Dana White finally put to rest the lightweight title situation by clarifying and summing it up.
“That’s it,” White told reporters backstage at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y (transcript courtesy of MMA Junkie). “That’s the only belt.”
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