The last few weeks have been relatively short on Conor McGregor news. Following his lucrative defeat at the hands of Floyd Mayweather in August, the UFC champ has been spending some time off vacationing in Ibiza with family and friends. But those keeping a close eye on the headlines may have noticed one extremely important development. Word is McGregor will testify in front of the United States Congress in favor of extending the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act to protect MMA fighters.
“We have been told by his team that he was going to come to the Hill to talk about this,” Congressman Markwayne Mullin told Reuters. Mullin, who holds a 3-0 record in MMA himself, is the politician at the head of pushing for the change.
The UFC is unsurprisingly against all of this. The Ali Act protects fighters from unfair contracts that prevent them from fighting for other promoters, establishes an independent ranking system, and bans promoters from acting as a fighter’s manager. A lot of this has the potential to turn MMA on its head depending on how the act is interpreted or enforced, so UFC ownership has been spending millions over the years lobbying against the move.
So why is Conor McGregor about to step in and fight for it?
No one knows, but the Irish UFC superstar has a history of making sure he’s always got a power play in his back pocket before going into negotiations with his promotional partner. Back when he was trying to set up a superfight with Floyd Mayweather (something the UFC was dead set against for months), McGregor made headlines when he was approved for boxing licenses in several states. That theoretically made him a boxer in the eyes of the law and protected by the Ali Act, which would prevent the UFC from stopping the fight.
“With the Ali act I believe I can,” he declared back in January when asked if he’d do the fight without the UFC. “But I think it’s smoother with all involved. I think we’re all about good business. I’ve done great business with the UFC, with Dana and everyone. But again, everyone’s gotta know their place. So we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Interestingly enough, he made that comment during a special pay-per-view event dubbed An Evening With Conor McGregor, which was nothing more than an hour long interview. It was at this event that he took the rumors of his desire to box Floyd and turned them into a concrete demand that it be allowed to happen, hell or high water.
He has a second Evening With Conor McGregor scheduled for September 29th. I expect he’s going to reveal his plans for what comes post-Mayweather, and knowing McGregor it’s probably going to be ambitious – and not what the UFC wants him to do, which is defend his lightweight belt against the winner of a Ferguson / Lee fight set for UFC 216 on October 7th.
UFC president Dana White has largely stopped pretending he can force McGregor into fights he’s not interested in taking. He’s even opened the door to boxing style payouts for McGregor, who has smashed every UFC PPV record there is to smash. But we bet there’s more audacious demands to be had from McGregor, who learned off the coast of Ibiza that he’s still just a small fish on a rented yacht compared to the businessmen sailing around on 200+ foot monstrosities.
He wants into the big boys club, and these recent murmurs of him testifying in favor of the Ali Act are a sign that he expects to be let through the door, or he’ll tear the whole place down in protest.
