In late November of 2016, the UFC decided to strip Conor McGregor of the world featherweight title. Stating that the title had been “relinquished” by “The Notorious”, UFC president Dana White reasoned that it was his way of “fixing the logjam” within the 145-pound division.
McGregor was dead set on becoming the UFC’s first simultaneous two-division champion, and to his credit, he was able to achieve this goal at UFC 205 by knocking out Eddie Alvarez in two rounds. But according to him, the UFC seemed to have a problem with it.
“Before I even got the belt, they wanted to strip me,” McGregor said during his pay-per-view interview in Manchester on Saturday (via MMA Fighting). “That’s what I’m saying, before I even won the belt, it was like, ‘you’ve got to give up this one.’ It’s like, just let me go and get the thing first. Let me go make the history. Let me go do what’s never been done before. And there seemed to be a problem with that, for whatever reason. I don’t know what the problem was, but again, a lack of communication.”
In his mind, McGregor is still a two-weight world champion, despite Jose Aldo’s bump to world champion status, and Max Holloway’s interim title win over Anthony Pettis in December. While he came under heavy criticism for not defending the featherweight belt, the brash Irishman says all the UFC had to do was come to him.
“All they had to do was ask,” McGregor said. “Right now, I’m walking around about 75 kilos. That’s like 160 pounds. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a heavy cut. It’s a heavy weight cut, but tell me one time I’ve missed it.”
“Tell me one time I’ve missed the featherweight limit. At the Aldo fight, there was no IV. We went without IVs at the Aldo fight. That was the first time I’d brought in a nutritionist, I did the best weight cut I’ve ever had, and I didn’t use an IV to rehydrate, and I went in and I knocked my opponent out in 13 seconds.”
“So how can they claim I’m not the featherweight world champion?” he continued. “How can they claim I’m not a featherweight anymore? Sign on the dotted line and I’ll take a featherweight fight, no problem. But make no mistake about it, you sign me up against any of these featherweights, they’re not going to show up, and that’s fact.”
“You sign me up against Jose Aldo, how confident are you that fight takes place? He ain’t showing again. You know that. Thirteen-second knockout, he pulled out before, two years traveling the world. The featherweights are praying, praying that I don’t come back down there. So whatever.”