Tony Ferguson roasts UFC champ Conor McGregor with special holiday message

It’s safe to say Conor McGregor probably didn’t get a Christmas card from Tony Ferguson this year.

But that didn’t stop Ferguson (23-3 MMA, 13-1 UFC), the UFC’s interim lightweight champion, from sending a special holiday message to champ McGregor (21-3 MMA, 9-1 UFC) on Twitter just before the world celebrates Christmas.

Ferguson dropped in a “#DefendorVacate,” along with other less polite hashtags, and called McGregor a “Friggen’ Potatoe Chip Eatin’ McNuggets Dunkin’, Paper Champ Dead Beat.”

The Dan Quayle-level misspelling of “potato” aside, Ferguson’s tweet rose to social media mastery when he included a GIF of Will Ferrell celebrating in a grocery aisle at the end of “Old School.”

Conor McGregor

Ferguson has been calling on McGregor to “defend or vacate” for months now. McGregor won the lightweight title in November 2016 when he took out Eddie Alvarez at UFC 205. At the time, it made him the first concurrent two-division champ in UFC history.

He was stripped of his featherweight title two months later, presumably because he was going to focus on defending the lightweight belt. McGregor won the featherweight title in December 2015, but never defended it. He instead chose to take two welterweight fights with Nate Diaz before moving up to 155 to challenge Alvarez.

After winning the lightweight title, McGregor took time off for his longtime girlfriend to have their first child, then moved over to the boxing world to fight unbeaten legend Floyd Mayweather in August.

Just how soon McGregor plans to return remains a mystery, though he recently said he’s not thinking about stepping away from the game at all, and also said his next fight will be in MMA. But UFC President Dana White recently said he’s operating as if McGregor is never going to return to the UFC for another fight.

Ferguson went under the knife earlier this month with elbow surgery. It’s not known just how long he’ll be out – but it’s apparently not long enough to keep him from using the holidays for yet another McGregor callout.

For more on the UFC’s upcoming schedule, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.

The Blue Corner is MMAjunkie‘s official blog and is edited by Mike Bohn.