Connor McGregor Stripped Of Featherweight Championship Belt
Conor McGregor’s reign as dual-division champion lasted all of two weeks.
During Saturday’s UFC Fight Night 101 broadcast, the promotion officially announced that McGregor has relinquished the featherweight championship. He will continue to hold the lightweight belt that he won from Eddie Alvarez at UFC 205.
UFC president Dana White had long maintained that he would not allow McGregor to hold onto both titles in the event that he defeated Alvarez. The decision to vacate the belt was expedited by the promotion wanting to raise the stakes for an upcoming bout between Max Holloway and Anthony Pettis. The featherweight contenders became the UFC 206 main event after an injury knocked light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier off of the card.
Holloway and Pettis will now compete for a new interim championship, while current interim champion Jose Aldo will be promoted to undisputed status. It is officially the second undisputed reign for Aldo after he held the title from April 2011 to December 2015.
In interviews leading up to his bout with Alvarez at UFC 205, McGregor had boasted that “they’re gonna need a fuckin’ army to come take them belts off me!”
So if @TheNotoriousMMA has two belts, where will he put them? ? #UFC205 #UFCNYC https://t.co/BYmHg7FvyB
— UFC (@ufc) September 27, 2016
He softened his stance somewhat in subsequent comments, and now it appears that the UFC has convinced him to give up his status as 145-pound champion.
McGregor had not recorded a single featherweight title defense since winning it from Aldo last December. It was unlikely that he would do so in the near future as he is expected to take time off until May to prepare for the birth of his first child.
UFC announced on Saturday that world lightweight champion Conor McGregor has vacated his featherweight title and opted to keep the 155-pound title he won by defeating Eddie Alvarez at UFC 205 on Nov. 12.
Interim featherweight titleholder Jose Aldo has now been elevated to undisputed champion, and following these developments, the interim UFC featherweight title will be on the line on Saturday, Dec. 10, as Max Holloway and Anthony Pettis battle for championship gold in the new main event of UFC 206.
The winner of the five-round bout, which will be held at Air Canada Centre in Toronto, will face Aldo in 2017 for the unified belt.
This bout replaces the UFC light heavyweight championship bout between Daniel Cormierand Anthony “Rumble” Johnson, which was scrapped when Cormier was forced to withdraw from the rematch on Friday due to injury.
In the main event of the historic UFC 205 event in Madison Square Garden, McGregor continued to make history when he stopped Alvarez in the second round to become the first fighter to hold two UFC titles simultaneously. With his decision to vacate the crown, McGregor’s longtime rival Aldo, who bounced back from his December 2015 loss to the Irishman by defeating Frankie Edgar for the interim featherweight title at UFC 200 in July, will now await the winner of Holloway vs. Pettis as he begins his second reign atop the division he ruled for over five years.
Also announced Saturday was a middleweight match between Kelvin Gastelum and Tim Kennedy that will take place on Dec. 10 as well, pending commission approval.
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