UFC Champ: McGregor Will Get ‘A** Whipping’ If He Comes Back
After winning the UFC featherweight title with an incredible 13-second knockout of Jose Aldo in Dec. 2015, Conor McGregor immediately jumped up in weight without defending the title, leaving the division in chaos.
This past June, however, rising star Max Holloway added clarity to the division when he stopped Jose Aldo in the main event of UFC 212 to become the undisputed 145-pound champion.
Recently, McGregor has said that he still considers himself the featherweight champion despite being stripped of the title late last year. Holloway, who lost a decision to the “Notorious” one in 2013, doesn’t agree with that idea, although he doesn’t take McGregor’s accomplishments away from him:
“I can’t do nothing about it. He was the champ once upon a time. He was the 2015 champ. They forgot to announce the year part,” Holloway said earlier this week on The MMA Hour. “It’s a little mixup I think they’ll figure out soon enough that they was the champ, you can’t take that away from ‘em. If Demetrious Johnson, he lost his fight, and he lost his belt, and he wanted to walk out with 10 of his belts that he has, you’re going to tell him he can’t?
“That’s his belts, he earned the damn thing, (McGregor) earned his belt and that’s his belt, but they forgot the clearcut ‘2015’. That belt is just a basic ‘do not defend’ belt, that’s what you’d call it, that’s what he did so I’m not going to take away from him.”
Holloway also made it clear that he wouldn’t be concerned if McGregor ever decided to come back to featherweight, as he promised the Irishman an ‘a**whipping’:
“No, because that means he’d have to fight my ass,” Holloway said. “If you want an asswhipping at 145, come on down. Everybody can get it. I’m here, I want to fight everyone. Being a champion now, I get to hang out with champions inside the organization, I get to be around other champions that are not even in our sport, and the mindset is different. It’s hard to go out there and protect something that you earned. I worked hard, I got this belt, I earned it.”
Holloway’s next fight has not yet been booked, although he’s expected to take on former lightweight champion Frankie Edgar in his first title defense.
