John Kavanagh Reacts To Conor McGregor Being Stripped Of Title

Conor McGregor hasn’t yet commented on the UFC stripping him of his featherweight title, but his longtime coach John Kavanagh recently did and it’s safe to say that Kavanagh is ‘disappointed’ in the way things unfolded:

“It was more the UFC (who decided),” Kavanagh said in an appearance at the Red FM breakfast show. “For me personally, I was very disappointed with how they went about doing it.”

McGregor, who most recently won the lightweight title at Nov. 12’s UFC 205, hadn’t defended the 145-pound title since winning it last December, but that may not have been the main reason behind the UFC’s decision.

Rather, the promotion needed a new main event for Dec. 10’s UFC 206 after light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier was forced to withdraw from his scheduled rematch with Anthony Johnson. The UFC then elected to bump the co-main event, a featherweight bout between Max Holloway and Anthony Pettis, up and make it for the interim title, while promoting Jose Aldo to undisputed champion.

“It was a very messy set of circumstances which led to doing it,” Kavanagh said. “They lost a main event and then they haphazardly threw together a new main event.”

“They felt they had to make this for a title in order for it to sell so they brought in another interim title that Jose Aldo already has and then bumped Jose Aldo up to the current undisputed champion. Which just seems ridiculous to me.”

It was Aldo, after all, that McGregor brutally knocked out in just 13 seconds last December, and Kavanagh simply feels as if the UFC was ‘shortsighted’:

“Conor has only been 11 months since he won that title,” he said. “There have been many, many examples of fighters waiting 15 months, 18 months before defending it. He’s 11 months and they stripped him of it.”

“I thought it was very shortsighted by the UFC how they went about doing it.”

Do you agree with Kavanagh’s comments?