Last weekend, the UFC announced that Conor McGregor had ‘relinquished’ his 145-pound title after winning the promotion’s lightweight title just a week prior. Accomplishing his goal to become the UFC’s first simultaneous two-weight world champion, the Irishman had previously said that it would take an ‘army’ to take one of his titles, but obviously the UFC had other plans.
Oddly enough, McGregor has yet to comment on the matter, which transpired after the UFC promoted a featherweight co-main event bout at UFC 206 (Dec. 10, 2016) between Max Holloway and Anthony Pettis to a main event interim title bout, while making Jose Aldo, the man McGregor knocked out in 13 seconds last December, to undisputed champion.
Yesterday (Dec. 1, 2016), UFC President Dana White further explained the decision to Yahoo Sports:
“Look, I let Conor fight [Nate] Diaz and then, I let him fight Diaz again,” White said. “Then, there was the whole 155-pound thing I let him do. But at the end of the day, him doing that tied up the division for a year. There’s a logjam there and a lot of guys were [angry].
“This was my way to fix the logjam. I wanted Aldo to fight Holloway for the belt, but he needed more time. So I looked at it and I said, well, it makes sense to make Aldo the champion and then have Holloway and Pettis fight for the interim title, and when Jose’s ready, barring any crazy injuries, the winner can fight him.”
What’s still unclear regarding the whole situation, is whether or not it was the “Notorious” one’s decision to give up the title. His longtime head coach John Kavanagh said that the decision was solely made by the UFC, but White said otherwise:
“He’s [Kavanagh] misinformed,” White said. “Yeah, he doesn’t know all that has gone on, I guess. Do you think I just did this? This was Conor’s decision.”
Do you agree with White’s comments?
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