The MMA community has erupted into chaos after McGregor’s “retirement”, but enough with the speculation – what happens to UFC 200?
It was a calm, drizzly Tuesday in Lincoln, Nebraska when I saw my Twitter feed blow up about Conor McGregor retiring. At first glance, I merely laughed it off as one of McGregor’s antics; after all, he has shown to be a mastermind when it comes to self-marketing and generating hype. However, credible MMA sources have revealed that this was no joke – Conor McGregor has retired. Or so it seems …. “retirement” can mean a lot of different things and I believe that McGregor’s retirement is not your typical “I’m done working and I’m never coming back.” No, this is a negotiation tactic. But mark my words – Conor McGregor will definitely fight again.
Then came the news of McGregor getting pulled off of UFC 200. While there are theories aplenty as to what the cause of this was (are McGregor and the UFC at odds with one another? Is McGregor hurt? Has he failed a drug test? Did the recent death of Joao Carvalho effect him?), I advise we skip past this until some reputable sources come out to support anything. Better yet, let’s wait for McGregor’s point-of-view, or John Kavanagh’s point-of-view. I somehow feel as if this whole debacle is nothing but a little inconvenience given how much fun Kavanagh has been having fun with it.
UFC 200
Moving the discussion forward, let’s talk about UFC 200. With the matchup between Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz scrapped, we are left with Miesha Tate vs. Amanda Nunes for the women’s bantamweight title and Frankie Edgar vs. Jose Aldo II for the interim featherweight title to carry the card. This will not cut it. Luckily, Dana White has hinted that Nate Diaz remaining on the card, but against whom? Virtually any lightweight contender would be a good match up, but it wouldn’t be headliner material. In fact, the one thing UFC 200 needs is a big name headliner to help carry the card much like Brock Lesnar did for UFC 100.
The people that can do that are Conor McGregor, Ronda Rousey, Jon Jones, and Georges St. Pierre. With McGregor presumably off that list (I’m still not ruling out the opportunity of him somehow getting thrown back on the card) we have Rousey, Jones, and GSP. Rousey is apparently unable to fight until the Fall, and Jones/DC II is surely being saved for New York; this leaves the French-Canadian’s return. He has been teasing the MMA community about his eventual return, but has recently stated that he wants big name fights – not necessarily the belt. While I think GSP vs. Robbie Lawler is definitely a big name fight, this leads me to think that Lawler is not in his cross-hairs. Who else would be a big name fight? Maybe Nate Diaz? Anderson Silva has been booked to fight Uriah Hall at UFC 198, so he’s off the list. I can think of no other “big name” but the other Diaz brother that GSP hasn’t defeated. After all, the Diaz brothers have made the trip to Vegas in order to promote this event, so you can almost certainly count on Nate Diaz being on the card.
Conor McGregor
So where does this leave our favorite Irishman? He’s pulled from UFC 200, so that means he will not be fighting Nate Diaz. Perhaps all of this chaos was merely McGregor and the UFC’s way of scrapping this McGregor/Diaz II match up after realizing that the MMA masses were opposed to this fight in the first place? It’s a good theory, but if that was the case why wouldn’t Diaz be the one who gets pulled so they can keep Conor on the card? Regardless, the outcome we get is McGregor versus another opponent not-named Nate Diaz at a UFC event not-named UFC 200. We don’t even know weight class he’ll be fighting at, or if he’ll even have his featherweight belt at the end of this. Nevertheless, a featherweight title defense against the Aldo/Edgar II winner would mean waiting until November at the earliest, and something tells me McGregor doesn’t want to wait that long. I speculate that McGregor will get a new opponent – perhaps a different lightweight contender. Now that I think of it, this would be a great time to give Max Holloway that title shot!
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