McGregor Wants Strickland: ‘No Mess, I’d Fancy It’

145 pound champion, 155 pound champion, and … 185 pound champion? Conor McGregor likes his chances of taking the middleweight belt off Sean Strickland.

Conor McGregor needs to get tested for ADHD because the former double champ can’t seem to focus on a single opponent or weightclass.

McGregor is expected to make his return sometime in late 2023 or early 2024 against Michael Chandler. It’s a fight that’s been promised since the two spent an entire season of The Ultimate Fighter jibing and shoving each other around. That hasn’t stopped “The Notorious” from calling out everyone else on a weekly basis, from Floyd Mayweather to Alexander Volkanovski to Justin Gaethje.

And now Conor is calling out Sean Strickland.

Strickland just took the middleweight title off Israel Adesanya in a shocker of a main event at UFC 293 in Sydney, Australia. No one thought Sean could beat Izzy. Many still think Izzy beat himself that night. And everyone at 185 pounds is salivating at the possibility of catching the belt while it’s being held by Strickland. Even McGregor, a former 145 pound champion, is suddenly considering a move up.

“Conor move up to 185 this is ur chance,” one fan wrote McGregor on X (formerly Twitter).

“No mess, I’d fancy it,” McGregor replied.

He also showed off a picture looking extremely jacked before declaring his next fight would be at 185.

Conor McGregor usually does what he wants, but there’s no way he’s going to get out of The Ultimate Fighter coaches’ fight before moving on to other endeavors. There’s no way Dana White will put a season of his favorite pet show on ESPN just for the main attraction to fizzle out at the end.

Maybe in the past when McGregor was on top of the world, he could swing into whatever big fight he wanted. These days it’s a real question as to whether the UFC will even issue him a USADA exemption to return to competition early. Which is … kind of too bad, really. McGregor vs. Strickland for the middleweight title would be kind of silly, but as the UFC becomes more and more bland in the ESPN era, we kind of miss the freakshow feeling a bout like this would bring.