One of the big stumbling blocks that seemed to be holding up the big Conor McGregor vs Eddie Alvarez fight at UFC 205 was the status of Conor’s featherweight title. McGregor won that belt back in December from Jose Aldo, but with an interim featherweight belt put into play at UFC 200, there’s been a lot of pressure on the Irishman to relinquish his title if he wasn’t willing to defend it. Pressure that McGregor seems uninterested in giving into.
“I’m gonna wrap one on one shoulder, I’m gonna wrap the other on the other shoulder,” he said at the UFC 205 press conference when asked what he’d do if he beats Eddie Alvarez. “And you’re gonna need a f**king army to come take the belts off me.”
But he did give a hint earlier at which weight class he preferred. “I’m very happy with 155-pound weight limit. I feel of all the divisions I’ve ran around and ran through, 155 will be the one where I take over the most, so I look forward to that.”
“They’re gonna have to gather an army to try and take one off me,” he repeated. “One’s gonna be there, the other’s gonna be there, and I’ll be picking and choosing who I wanna destroy next and that’s it.”
As for Jose Aldo, who’s currently holding the interim featherweight belt after defeating Frankie Edgar at UFC 200, McGregor seemed dismissive.
“We’ll see what happens with Aldo,” he said. “It’s hard to even think about Aldo. I KO’d him in 13 seconds. I traveled around the world with him. He pulled out on two weeks notice. If Frankie was good enough and he had come through on that one, it would have been me and Frankie in there for the featherweight belt here. He just wasn’t up to scratch.”
“So I’m gonna let that featherweight division play out and see how it goes. But I’m the featherweight champion, now in November I’m gonna be the lightweight champion, and I’m gonna hold two of them consecutively, that’s it.”
“You ain’t got a shot!” his UFC 205 opponent Eddie Alvarez interjected. “You’ll be beltless November 12th. Not at 145, not at 155. You’re gonna have to give up the little boy belt, and you’re not getting the big boy belt.”
As you can see, the drama for UFC 205 has already started to ramp up. We can’t imagine what things are going to be like by the time November 12th finally arrives.