In the days following last week’s official announcement that Conor McGregor would rematch Nate Diaz at welterweight in the main event of July 9’s blockbuster UFC 200 card from Las Vegas, the MMA community has continued their backlash at a fight they consider to be unnecessary after Diaz already beat the Irish trash talker who is leaving his featherweight belt on the sidelines once again.
The circumstances we’ll witness at UFC 200 are most definitely a number of strange ones, as Jose Aldo will meet Frankie Edgar for the interim featherweight title on the same card where the champion will actually be fighting, a scenario that we’ve obviously never seen anything remotely like before.
And a lot of that has to do McGregor’s massive size advantage at featherweight, where he often appears very sucked up and drawn as he struggles to make the division’s 145-pound weight limit. That was a main motivating factor in his move up to lightweight to take on champion Rafael dos Anjos, and he took it a step further when he fought Diaz at welterweight on short notice.
That has left the entire division wondering if he’ll ever venture back down to 145 pounds, and one top-ranked competitor doesn’t believe he will. In a recent talk with MMA Fighting, No. 4 Max Holloway said that he doesn’t envision McGregor ever making it back to 145 because the cut is too draining for him to make any longer:
“At the end of the day, who knows if he comes back to 145? Honestly, my feeling, I don’t think that he does. I think that 155-pound fight (against dos Anjos) was already saying that he just wanted to be at 155, hold the two titles, say that he did it, then just move up full-time. That’s what I thought he was thinking of doing, because he’s a big guy. All you hear of him is struggling to make 145. This guy struggles. You see, all he does is [cut weight] all week long.
“So he was going to go up sooner or later. Then you see him getting bigger every fight. … His last fight, he was a big boy. And he already had a hard time cutting. [With him] going back up to 170, I think he’s going to gain weight and have to cut a little, just trying to compete at that level, at 170. So who knows if he’s coming down?”
As for his own plight, where ‘Blessed’ find himself on the outside of the title picture looking despite an incredible eight straight victories since losing to McGregor of all people back in August of 2013, Holloway believes that he’s being held back because he didn’t finish his last fight against ultra-tough veteran Jeremy Stephens:
“I just feel left out because my last fight wasn’t a finish,” Holloway said. “When I was finishing guys, the media was on me like crazy. Then I have this one decision fight against a guy (Stephens) who, ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone, Anthony Pettis, these guys couldn’t finish him. And then [people are] looking at me, asking me how the hell I didn’t finish him. It’s like, look at these guys. These guys are beasts and they had a hard time with the fight too. They couldn’t finish him either. So I’m a true believer in, people only remember you for your last fight. And my last fight, I felt, was great, but I guess some people didn’t think it was so hot. So it is what it is.”
That sounds like quite the mature and patient attitude from Holloway, who at only 24 years old, has nothing but time on his hands as one of the UFC’s brightest potential future champions. Holloway has already fought five of the top 10 at featherweight, and with Aldo and Edgar obviously tied up with each other for the foreseeable future, the only logical choices for the suddenly surging Hawaiian are bouts with former title contender Chad Mendes and Ricardo Lamas.
As for McGregor, only time will tell if he ever fights Holloway or anyone else at 145 pounds again.
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