Twitter Mailbag: What becomes of Conor McGregor with a loss at UFC 194?

Conor McGregor

In this week’s Twitter Mailbag, what happens if Conor McGregor loses at UFC 194? And if he can’t beat Jose Aldo, who in the world can?

We’ll also walk the fine line between getting pumped for future fights without jinxing them, and discuss the UFC’s plans for a new rehab facility that might require some arm-twisting to get fighters to visit.

Got a question of your own? Tweet it to @BenFowlkesMMA.

Honestly, I have to say that it’s McGregor who has the best chance of beating Aldo right now, if only by process of elimination. Look around the featherweight ranks. Who else is there who hasn’t already tried? Guys like Frankie Edgar, Chad Mendes, Ricardo Lamas, they’ve all had their shots at Aldo. At least McGregor represents a fresh challenge. He also happens to be the only person other than Aldo to beat Mendes, so he must know a thing or two about this fighting business.

As for what happens if the Great Irish Hope loses to the Brazilian Menace, then it might get tricky. McGregor is big business for the UFC right now. If he gets wrecked by Aldo, a lot of the air will leak out of that balloon. Still, McGregor’s appeal is built on his magnetic personality and his ability to drum up an interesting rivalry with just about anybody. If he loses to Aldo, he’ll just go pick on someone new. He might even do it in a new weight class.

I’ve heard a lot of theories to explain why Reebok has screwed up so big and so often on UFC gear. Intentional self-sabotage – the corporate equivalent of trying to get your significant other to dump you just so you don’t have to the do the dirty work – is a popular one. So is “trolling,” that term which seems to have become a catch-all for the Internet age.

It’s telling that so many people feel the need to come up with an elaborate explanation for this, but conspiracy theories tend to ignore the obvious answers. In this case, I think Reebok is so consistently getting it wrong because it doesn’t care enough to get it right. Its deal with the UFC apparently isn’t important enough to merit a closer inspection, and so products are consistently rushed to market before they’re ready. It’s a frantic sort of laziness, which is a great recipe for incompetence.

As for Giblert Melendez vs. Anderson Aldo? Well, let’s just say one of those sounds like a lethal combination of two great fighters. The other one sounds like the nerdy kid who gets picked on in an after-school special.

My answer to the first question is, depends who wins. Paige VanZant seems like a commodity that the UFC has invested in, much more so than Rose Namajunas at this point. That’s a little baffling to me since a) when it comes to experience and raw skill, they don’t seem so far apart, and b) as someone who has interviewed and written abut them both, I can tell you right now that Namajunas is the more interesting personality, and it’s not even close.

The big difference between them, at least in the eyes of UFC executives, seems to be sheer, overwhelming blondeness. Which, fine, whatever. But if Namajunas beats PVZ, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the UFC give her the next title shot after Claudia Gadelha gets another chance against champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk. If VanZant wins, however, I’d expect to see the UFC take it slow and build her up a little more first.

That leads to your second question. Are either Namajunas or VanZant ready for Jedrzejczyk? Probably not. Few people outside of Gadelha can say that they are. And if Jedrzejczyk retains her title? Well, remember what her last two opponents have looked like after a few rounds in the cage with her? If your primary interest in VanZant is her pretty face – sorry, I mean “it factor” – and the money that face brings, you’d be wise to keep it as far from Jedrzejczyk’s fists as you can.

Um, because it’s awesome? Because it feels like an old school fight, but in a new school way? In Demian Maia and Gunnar Nelson we have two great jiu-jitsu practitioners who have also become pretty great MMA fighters. We also have a fight that suddenly feels extremely relevant to the welterweight title picture. So yeah, you put stylistic fun together with divisional importance, you can’t help but get all …

That seems like an oversimplification of the Northcutt clan’s position on the Tristar gym in Montreal. From what I’ve read, Sage Northcutt’s dad didn’t want to leave him there for too long, away from home and out of his usual training comfort zone before his fight with Cody Pfister, which makes some sense to me. Northcutt has said he plans to go back to Tristar after this fight, and clearly there are some great minds and great fighters up there to learn from.

But in general, having a family member so involved in your fight career can be double-edged sword. Ask anyone from Floyd Mayweather to Duke Roufus, the latter of whom recently explained to MMAjunkie why fighting is “a tough thing to do as a family sometimes.”

On one hand, family is comfortable. You can trust family (or at least, you’d like to think so, depending on who your family happens to be). I know I trust my dad, and even when I disagree with him I never have any doubt that his advice is based on nothing other than his understanding of my best interests. That’s not always true with a coach or a manager. They might have ulterior motives, or they might just have too many other fighters to worry about.

But those deep emotional bonds that come with familial relationships can also hinder you. If things aren’t working out with a coach or manager, you can say so. But how do you tell your dad that you don’t want him involved in your career anymore? What’s that going to be like around the dinner table come Christmas?

If I were the UFC, I wouldn’t worry one bit about Benson Henderson going to a regional organization like Road FC or ONE. I would, however, want to keep him out of Bellator, which could put a fighter like him to good use right about now. At the same time, if I were Henderson, I’d want to see that $200,000 from Road FC upfront, and in cash money.

At this point, Daniel Cormier is going to look for any possible excuse to needle Jon Jones about absolutely anything. Call it a relationship dynamic. These are the two guys who couldn’t even stop bickering with one another during the lull in a satellite interview. So of course Cormier is going to find some way to turn a positive into a negative when talking about Jones’ newly jacked physique.

Does he believe it? That’s the question. After the way the first fight went, Cormier has to find some way to convince himself that the rematch will be significantly different. That’s not easy. Whether he’s trying to get in Jones’ head or his own, the psychological barrier to victory is one Cormier has to find some way around.

Thanks a lot, man. Guess it’s only a matter of time until we hear that Chris Weidman had a safe dropped on his head right before Luke Rockhold came down with dengue fever. You happy now? Or do you want to go ahead and tell us how awesome the main card fight between Yoel Romero and Ronaldo Souza is, just so they can both slip on the same banana peel during their walk to the scales next Friday?

The UFC calls its fighters independent contractors, but by almost any existing definition, they aren’t. They ought to be considered employees, and if the matter were ever brought before the IRS, I think the UFC would have a hard time arguing otherwise.

At the same time, the UFC’s effort to address the injury epidemic in MMA is laudable. Sure, it doesn’t sound so great to claim that you’ll have to “twist some arms” to get your fighters to play along, but this is one of those instances when fighters should want to play along.

But we should be wary any time we hear UFC executives saying that what they’re doing is “no different than if you played for a professional sports team.” That’s an argument the UFC makes very selectively. Talk about the degree of control management can exert on the athletes, and you’ll hear all about what other major pro sports leagues do. You start talking money and revenue splits, however, then suddenly UFC executives want you to know that they aren’t the NFL or NBA. Funny how that works, isn’t it?

Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Follow him on Twitter at @BenFowlkesMMA. Twitter Mailbag appears every Thursday on MMAjunkie.