UFC 206: The Wrong Way to Get the Right Outcome
Conor McGregor has been stripped of his featherweight title in order to save UFC 206. It’s the wrong way to get the right result.
Something had to give. Conor McGregor, even as the biggest name in MMA, could simply not take time off to start a family while holding two belts in the UFC. It would have essentially held two divisions hostage. Of course, it was believed from the beginning that he would have to drop one. And so he has – though he has been uncharacteristically quiet about it.
In the end, it was the wrong way to get the right result. UFC 206 struggled out of the gate from the moment it was announced. The promotion’s big return to Toronto — its first in three years since the classic Jon Jones vs. Alexander Gustafsson bout at UFC 165 — should have been a stacked card that sold like hotcakes in an MMA mecca. Instead, the promotion gambled, and lost, at coming to terms with the AWOL Georges St. Pierre.
When GSP, who had entered the USADA testing pool earlier this year in order to be ready to appear at UFC 206, announced no deal had been made and he was essentially a free agent, the bottom fell out of the event.
The previously announced title fight between Daniel Cormier and Anthony Johnson became the headliner, but that was a re-do of a fight that took place not so long ago. Plus any light heavyweight title fight not featuring Jon Jones is met with a healthy dose of skepticism these days.
That wasn’t rock bottom, however. The undercard was weak, filled mostly with local names in a market that’s hip to MMA booking. Canadian MMA fans know the score: they’ve been burned in Calgary and Winnipeg before after all, subject to last minute card changes that nearly killed events. Sure, it’s great to see Jordan Mein back in the cage, as he retired awfully young, but is he selling PPVs or putting butts in seats? The same could be said for most of the undercard.
In fact, until the eventual addition of Anthony Pettis vs. Max Holloway as a co-main event a few weeks ago, the only main card worthy fight was arguably Cub Swanson vs. Doo Ho Choi.
Then came the fallout from UFC 205: Donald Cerrone, one of the most active fighters in company history, needed a home after his bout against Kelvin Gastelum fell through. Rashad Evans, who couldn’t get licensed in New York due to an irregularity on his MRI, had his fight with Tim Kennedy shifted to Toronto as well.
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Suddenly, you had a card coming together. The 205-pound title fight. A key featherweight bout. Cowboy. Suga. Swanson vs. Choi. Five fights that made a serviceable, if not great, PPV card.
Then the bottom fell out again: Daniel Cormier was hurt with a groin tear. He was out of the event. Anthony Johnson, challenger to his title, was unwilling to square off against another foe. Not only that, but Rashad couldn’t get licensed in Ontario, either.
The UFC had put all its eggs in the GSP basket, all but one anyway. Now that egg was a scrambled mess, and a non-title fight between Max Holloway, the hottest name in the featherweight division not named McGregor, and former lightweight champ Anthony Pettis, 1-3 in his last four, was poised to become a main event fight.
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If you’re the UFC, what do you do? Pettis vs. Holloway is a great fight, and hardcore fans salivated over it from the moment it was announced. It definitely moved some tickets at an event yet to sell out. Yet it’s a UFC on FOX headliner at best. A pay-per-view co-main event. There was no gravitas to that bout, not on its own.
So you slap a title on the affair, even if you have to force one into the picture to do so.
To say that the featherweight interim championship on the line at UFC 206 is a manufactured belt would be a gross understatement. It’s a move the reeks of desperation. Yet it’s the right result — sort of — in the end, only a result reached in the laziest, worst way possible.
See, Conor McGregor was never going to hold two belts for long. At best, he might have defended the featherweight strap once before ditching that weight cut and focusing on (literally) bigger things. Then there was the two fight detour against Nate Diaz, and suddenly, McGregor had held the 145-pound title for nearly a year without defending it.
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When he captured the 155-pound title against Eddie Alvarez at UFC 205 earlier this month, relinquishing a belt was almost a given. Equally a given was that it would be the featherweight title. Never mind his claim that the UFC would need an army to take it from him: McGregor the showman and McGregor the businessman are two different characters completely. He knows he doesn’t need titles to sell tickets, knows when to budge (mostly, missed press conferences aside), and knows that should he lose the lightweight title, a welterweight title shot or even another go at featherweight is in the cards.
Again, though, in manufacturing a title fight that shouldn’t be a title fight, the UFC got the right result, but were left with a whole serving of egg on their face. It looks amateurish. Unplanned. A knee-jerk reaction to a mess of their own making. Which it is.
What should have happened? A press conference, McGregor present, some prepared words, about his focus on a new family, not wanting to stall two divisions, and the option given to him to take another run at that belt some day. Maybe some promotion of a future fight against Khabib Nurmagomedov or Tony Ferguson.
Instead we get silence, from the champ, from the UFC. We’re told he relinquished his belt, a word that makes him sound almost willing, but you have to know McGregor, like the fans, isn’t happy with how this went down.
Now, what is UFC 206 left with? A meaningless interim title. The real champion (McGregor) isn’t injured, just too busy to worry about the division at the moment. The real interim champ, Jose Aldo, is now promoted to champ, but it’s not as if he’s injured or unable to fight. He may or may not be willing these days, but in any case, Jose Aldo was just promoted back to featherweight champ without ever getting his revenge.
Pettis and Holloway, meanwhile, will go to war for a belt that holds no weight. Its existence is merely to justify a PPV. Five rounds between these two should result in a classic fight, but just as this was the worst possible way for the UFC to strip McGregor (or near abouts anyway), it’s the worst possible circumstances to book a fight between the two. Just an added distraction, albeit a shiny golden one. At least the division is opened back up now, but the whole affair has left a very bitter taste.
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