Conor McGregor got an excellent present from his coach John Kavanagh for his 28th birthday: the two championship belts he earned while fighting on the regional circuit. Before arriving in the UFC, the Irish fighter was making waves by becoming the first to ever hold two Cage Warriors championship belts at once.
Unfortunately for him, he didn’t get to keep the belts for too long. After winning the lightweight title, the UFC came calling and brought him up to the big leagues. Soon after, Cage Warriors took the belts back under dubious circumstances.
“You wouldn’t believe what happened to them Cage Warriors titles,” McGregor told Ariel Helwani back in 2013. “When I won them titles, when I won the first one, my coach John hangs all the belts we won on the wall and he was always saying, ‘Conor, bring down your belt and we’ll hang it on the wall. And I kept saying, ‘Yeah yeah, I forgot it, I’ll bring it down tomorrow!’ And then tomorrow, ‘Oh I forgot it again!’ And that happened for months and then the next belt, ‘Oh Conor, bring down them belts!'”
“And then this guy drops me a nice message, he wanted me to come down and do some filming to talk about suicide and bullying, asked if I’d come down and say a few words and bring me two belts. Of course I’ll do it, that sounds great. So I bring the two belts down to the gym, leave the belts there and it’s the only time the belts are in the gym. And the Cage Warriors staff came over to film one of my teammates who was fighting for the title, Cathal Pendred. The PR team are filming him and I wasn’t there. And they take the f*cking belts back with them!”
“So now right now I’ve got no belts or anything. I was planning on not giving those belts back, when it came down to it, I was just going to delay it as long as I could and then pay for the belts and say look, I’ll just charge a few quid and keep them belts. I’m gonna get those belts back somehow, to be honest. I dunno what I’m going to do, but I’m going to get those belts back. But you leave something down for two seconds and it’s nicked, right like that!”
McGregor has obviously had his plate full over the past two years, so it was a nice gesture indeed for his coach to strike a deal with Cage Warriors to get him those belts back. And don’t think too poorly towards the UK promotion. The UFC is pretty much the only league big enough to be able to let each champion hold onto the belts they’ve won forever.
