by King Hazard
It may appear like Conor McGregor is enjoying the spotlight on social media, but the Irish sensation is definitely planning his next move in combat sport.
Following his highly-praised boxing match with Floyd Mayweather in August, McGregor now has options to fight both in the boxing and MMA world. One of McGregor’s potential fights is to face Nate Diaz in trilogy grudge match, however, Diaz’s fight pursue has greatly increased since his last fight. Apparently, Diaz is asking for a $20-$30 million fight purse just to fight McGregor again inside the Octagon.
At the moment, McGregor turned off by his demand and is very interested in legitimizing the UFC lightweight title, which means he is ready to put aside big “money fights” until he shuts a few people up who criticize him.
In an interview with Caroline Pearce, McGregor said,
Look, I’ve got the UFC title to defend and that means something to me. I will defend that world title.
Nathan (Nate Diaz) is there. He’s trying to come in here and make all of these demands. If he starts pricing himself out of an event, I probably will defend against the person who wins this interim belt…or someone along that line to legitimize it again.
I’ve already gone from the highest of the high in terms of a money fight. Now the question I always get is about defending the belt and legitimizing the sport and the rankings.
Maybe now it would be a good time for me to go and do that and shut that side up.
This weekend, Tony Ferguson and Kevin Lee will face each other at UFC 216 for the interim lightweight title. There’s a good chance McGregor will be watching as he was previously interested in the Tony and Khabib Nurmagomedov fight, which was cancelled due to an injury.
In my head now, I’m very interested in seeing this fight this weekend and to see how the lightweight title picture pans out and to go in and correct that whole situation. That’s where my thoughts are.
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