Conor McGregor may be focused on his boxing match with Floyd Mayweather on Aug. 26 but he hasn’t lost sight on his eventual return to the UFC.
While McGregor is being touted as the UFC lightweight champion in the lead up to his fight with Mayweather, the 29-year old Irishman still believes that he’s actually a two division champion after making history last November.
It was at UFC 205 when McGregor became the first ever simultaneous two weight-class champion after finishing Eddie Alvarez to win the lightweight title, which came less than a year after he knocked out Jose Aldo in just 13 seconds to become the undisputed featherweight champion.
A few weeks later, the UFC stripped him of the featherweight title but even now 10 months later, McGregor says he’s still the king of two divisions and absolutely plans on defending both titles when he makes his return to the Octagon.
“100-percent. I mean how can I not consider myself the UFC featherweight world champion and the UFC lightweight world champion?” McGregor said on Wednesday. “The current UFC featherweight world champion is Max Holloway, a man that I dismantled and the former was Jose Aldo. I still reign supreme over that division.
“155-pound division I know there’s talks of an interim belt. I’d only won that belt and literally a month later there was an interim [title fight] scheduled. It is what it is, everyone knows I am the multiple weight world champion of the UFC’s featherweight division and the lightweight division.”
It was just a day ago that UFC president Dana White announced that Tony Ferguson would battle Kevin Lee to crown a new interim lightweight champion in McGregor’s absence.
While White is still holding out hope that McGregor will fight in the UFC again before the end of 2017, there are obviously no guarantees until after his bout with Mayweather is finished.
Still, McGregor sounds determined to make a triumphant return to the Octagon to reclaim his post as the best in the world.
“I look forward to going back and continuing where I left off,” McGregor said.
For now, the lightweight division will move forward with Ferguson vs. Lee while rumors persist that Holloway will defend his title later this year against former champion Frankie Edgar. Regardless of those two fights it certainly seems McGregor plans on re-staking his claim on both divisions when he comes back to the UFC.
