Conor McGregor: I Still Reign Supreme Over Featherweight

While Conor McGregor has moved on to a boxing matchup with Floyd Mayweather for the moment, the two-time UFC champion will eventually have to come back and defend his lightweight belt, something he failed to do at featherweight.

Due to his lack of featherweight title defenses, the Irishman was eventually stripped of the 145-pound belt.

However, the now-lightweight champ still feels as if he is the top dog at featherweight, despite his absence from the division.

“I mean, how can I not consider myself the UFC featherweight world champion and the UFC lightweight world champion?” McGregor said on Wednesday. “The current UFC featherweight world champion is Max Holloway, a man who I dismantled, and the former was Jose Aldo. I still reign supreme over that division. And then also, the 155-pound division, I know there’s talks of an interim belt — I’d only won that belt, and literally a month later there was an interim scheduled.”

McGregor cleaned house during his rise to the top of the 145-pound division, culminating in a devastating 13-second knockout over longtime divisional kingpin Aldo.

It’s safe to say that his victories over current champ Holloway, former two-time champ Aldo, Dustin Poirier, and Chad Mendes gives him good reason to assume his dominance would continue should he return to the weight class he made his name in.

With his victory over Holloway in mind, McGregor is surprisingly asserting his role as the man who cleared out the division in the weeks leading into his bout with Mayweather.

“But it is what it is, everyone knows I am the multiple-weight world champion of the UFC’s featherweight division and lightweight division, and I look forward to going back and continuing where I left off.”

Do you believe McGregor is still the rightful champion at 145 pounds? Or did he vacate that belt once he won the lightweight championship and successfully pursued a boxing match with Mayweather?