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3 options for Conor McGregor after beating Nate Diaz at UFC 202
Conor McGregor won a hard-fought matchup against Nate Diaz at UFC 202 on Saturday, scoring a majority decision over the only fighter with a win over him inside the Octagon.
The victory opens plenty of doors for McGregor, and he couldn’t help but acknowledge it after the fight, saying, “There’s a lot of stuff in the pipeline. (Expletive)s about to hit the fan, I feel,” in a scrum with the media after the fight.
While the UFC seems to have returned to the palm of Conor McGregor’s hand, here are three options we think make the most sense for “The Notorious”.
This one is fairly obvious and most likely to come to fruition. McGregor evened the score on Saturday night and both fighters agreed to run it back to complete the trilogy in the near future. Actually, Diaz says he won’t even entertain anything else.
Very few reasons to not capitalize on the success of UFC 202 and give the fans McGregor vs. Diaz 3. One of those reasons, however, is that McGregor is currently sitting on the featherweight belt...
It’s been 253 days since Conor McGregor ended Jose Aldo’s reign as UFC featherweight champion and McGregor has yet to defend that belt while fighting and settling the score with lightweight Nate Diaz.
The UFC put the interim belt up for grabs at UFC 200’s matchup between Aldo and Frankie Edgar, which Aldo won by unanimous decision. Now he waits for his rematch with McGregor … even though it’s not something McGregor sounded too thrilled about in his post-fight media scrum:
“Look, we’ll see. I’m the 145-pound champion. The interim 145-pound champion is a man I KO’d in 13 seconds. I’ve got to figure out what’s next. But right now, I don’t know what’s next. There’s many, many things in the pipeline, so, sit tight.”
McGregor said something very interesting in his post-fight scrum after his win over Diaz in regards to the UFC lightweight title:
“I believe, if [Nate and I] do it again, it’ll be at 155 -- maybe for the belt. Who knows what’s going to happen?”
McGregor is clearly implying that he could challenge current lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez for the title, beat him, then complete the trilogy with Diaz with UFC gold on the line.
It’s not unfeasible, especially with McGregor coming off a huge win against Diaz. He hadn’t even defended his featherweight title before accepting a superfight with lightweight titleholder Rafael dos Anjos. Alvarez has welcomed a fight with McGregor, and if the Irishman is thinking long-term, which it appears he is, a trilogy bout with Diaz for a UFC title makes that matchup that much more lucrative.
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