After much speculation, Rory MacDonald will not be getting his first title shot in the UFC.
According to UFC Tonight’s Ariel Helwani, the UFC brass called MacDonald to update the status of his once-promised title shot. Dana White didn’t just color MacDonald the No. 1 contender after his victory over Tarec Saffiedine in October, he said the fight would take place in MacDonald’s home country.
“It’s pretty impossible to deny Rory that (title shot), whoever comes out of that Hendricks-Lawler fight, he’s the next guy in line,” White told The Canadian Press.
Obviously that was before Johny Hendricks and Robbie Lawler took center stage at UFC 181 earlier this month to make for the “pretty impossible” scenario White could barely imagine—before the two men completed rounds five through 10 of what will likely end up being a 15-round trilogy for the UFC’s two most recent welterweight champions.
“It’s all good,” MacDonald told Helwani. “I’m just gonna light up whoever is next. Like always.”
In reality, it might only be “all good” because that’s just the way it has to be. Because for as excited as MacDonald may have gotten after being “promised” a title shot, he must have be cognizant of the big, fat historic asterisk title shot guarantees have under White’s lexicon.
Just look at Anthony Pettis who, after defeating Benson Henderson for the WEC lightweight championship to become the promotion’s final 155-pound king, was promised a title shot against the winner of Frankie Edgar vs. Gray Maynard.
Edgar and Maynard would fight to a draw, forcing the incoming WEC champ to either sit and wait about a year for his turn or pick up a fight with one of the top UFC lightweights. A unanimous-decision loss to Clay Guida and controversial Edgar title fights would prevent Pettis from fighting for the title until 2013, about two years after his first shot was supposed to take place.
Then there’s Cub Swanson and his promised shot at Jose Aldo’s featherweight throne. After racking up Ws against some of the best featherweights on the planet, White and Co. felt Swanson had done more than enough to stake his claim as the the division’s No. 1 contender.
But that was before brash Irishman and fan favorite Conor McGregor proved himself against a top-10 featherweight, giving the UFC the go-ahead for Irishman’s future title aspirations. Swanson would be asked to take on Edgar in what Swanson understood to be the final contingency separating him from his shot at UFC gold.
You could even ask Alexander Gustafsson about his latest plea for a shot at light heavyweight champion Jon Jones. The Swede lost his shot at the champ after suffering a knee injury. All was well until Jones had to pull out of his replacement bout against Daniel Cormier, which forced the Swedish fighter to re-request his originally promised title bout.
But as the UFC likely saw it, the Jones-Cormier brawl created too great of a financial opportunity to leave untapped, regardless of when the fight would take place or whom they would inconvenience.
Unfortunately for MacDonald and other UFC contenders, title shots are circumstantial. Meaning, they’re only promised as long as they make financial sense for the promotion, not the fighter.
That’s because the average fan would have rather watched Edgar-Maynard III, Aldo-McGregor and Jones-Cormier.
For as well as MacDonald’s fought as of late, a trilogy between Lawler and Hendricks, who fought to a close controversial decision, makes more financial sense than adding a new fighter into the mix.
This situation, while likely disappointing for MacDonald, may harness a silver lining. Carlos Condit, who handed MacDonald his first career defeat back in 2010, plans to return this March or April. The Natural Born Killer should make for a viable opponent for the division’s No. 2-ranked welterweight.
Kristian Ibarra is a Featured Columnist at Bleacher Report MMA. He also serves as the sports editor at San Diego State University’s student-run newspaper, The Daily Aztec. Follow him on Twitter at @Kristian_Ibarra for all things MMA.
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