Dana White Says A Conor McGregor Vs. Tony Ferguson Fight ‘Has To Happen,’ But Does It?

UFC 216 went down on Saturday night and featured an exciting battle for the interim lightweight championship between Tony Ferguson and Kevin Lee (see the finish here). Ferguson has been questing for that gold for quite a while now, putting together a 10 fight win streat — the longest in UFC lightweight history. And now he has the belt … but it’s an interim title, an asterisks at best or false at worst in the eyes of fans.

If he wants a chance to win the real belt, he’ll have to get it through lightweight champ Conor McGregor. Unfortunately for him, McGregor is a unique figure in the UFC landscape who calls his own shots and picks his own opponents. He and his coaches have been talking about a third fight with Nate Diaz next, not a unification bout against Ferguson.

“Nobody’s talked about Diaz,” UFC president Dana White said after UFC 216. “Diaz has never been talked about. That’s internet bulls**t. Tony’s the interim champion, Conor’s the champion, that’s the fight that makes sense. It’s the fight that has to happen, it doesn’t ‘make sense,’ it’s the fight that has to happen.”

But these days, what should happen doesn’t always seem to happen in the UFC. Michael Bisping was supposed to unify the middleweight belts against interim champ Robert Whittaker, but is about to step into the cage against Georges St-Pierre in November instead. If Georges wins the belt, few expect him to stick around and defend it. When he came back, his plan was to pick off belts at 185, 170, and 155. Now he’s also another potential opponent in the McGregor sweepstakes.

White’s declarations about what has to happen next no longer seem to hold as much weight as they used to, a trend kicked off by Conor McGregor. From the moment he won the featherweight belt by knocking out Jose Aldo in 13 seconds, McGregor hasn’t accepted a single match up the UFC has demanded he take. He refused to rematch Aldo and moved up to challenge for the lightweight title. When he lost to late replacement Nate Diaz, he twisted the UFC’s arm until they secured him a rematch. After taking the lightweight belt off Eddie Alvarez, the UFC insisted McGregor would defend it next. Instead, he made a fight with Floyd Mayweather a reality.

The UFC hasn’t been in the driver’s seat with McGregor for a while now, and it’s unlikely that’s about to change now. If McGregor takes on Ferguson next, it’s because he chooses to do so. And it’s not certain that’ll be the case. Dana White continues to insist McGregor plans to fight again this year. But if Conor decides Ferguson isn’t ‘worthy’ and instead spends the first half of 2018 enjoying his new mega-wealth on the sidelines, what’s the UFC to do then? They’ve got a full slate of pay-per-views that need titles at the top of them, one of the main reasons this Ferguson vs. Lee interim business occurred in the first place. All of a sudden, Tony Ferguson vs. Conor McGregor doesn’t seem like as much of an inevitability as White claims at all.

All the UFC can hope for is that McGregor makes things easier and agrees to face Ferguson, partly out of gratitude for White not killing the Mayweather deal, and partly to keep his lightweight belt from starting to looking like a prop. McGregor recently paid lip service to defending his title. But make no mistake: McGregor has loads of options, and a fight against Tony isn’t even the third most lucrative or prestigious possibility on the list.