Twitter Mailbag: On McGregor's career crossroads, Holloway's replacement challenger, and more

What will his next choice of opponent tell us about the UFC lightweight champion’s true goals? And who would make the best replacement to fight for the UFC featherweight title now that Frankie Edgar is injured? Plus, the UFC is getting into boxing now? Seriously?

All that and more in this week’s Twitter Mailbag. To ask a question of your own, tweet to @BenFowlkesMMA.

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You have to decide for yourself where that point is, but this seems like a pretty clear crossroads. If Conor McGregor’s next fight (assuming the UFC gives in to his ownership demands) isn’t a UFC lightweight title defense against Tony Ferguson, or whoever holds the interim belt by then, it’s going to get a lot harder to refer to him as a UFC champion.

And I don’t say that lightly, since prior to this point I could see his reasoning for not defending his UFC belts. He’s an ambitious man, which meant he was always looking for something bigger and better. He was also looking for monster paydays and historic fights.

He’s had both in the past couple years. And we enjoyed it so much, we didn’t get overly concerned when it sometimes failed to adhere to a clear logic. But where’s he going to go from here? It’s tough to take a step up from that Floyd Mayweather bout. The best thing he can do is cement himself as a champion by making his first defense against a worthy challenger. And “El Cucuy” is as worthy as it gets.

It’s definitely not targeting the casual audience, that’s for sure. But if you heard all about how awesome UFC 217 was and you decided to tune in to the next free cable TV fight to judge the action for yourself, you could do a lot worse.

There’s bound to be some good action here, especially in the main and co-main. And if you don’t know Diego Sanchez’s long history in the sport, maybe you won’t even be bummed out if Matt Brown steamrolls him the way I expect him to.

Plus, if you can stay up and endure the commercials, Dustin Poirier and Anthony Pettis are probably going to give you one hell of a show in the headliner. I just can’t see that being a boring fight, no matter how it goes.

The question is, do any of these fights have immediate ramifications for their divisions? With a couple possible exceptions, no, not really. But that doesn’t mean they won’t be a good time for anyone with FS1 in their cable package this Saturday night.

“Needed” is a tricky term, especially since Max Holloway already beat all three of those guys. So then you ask yourself two questions: 1) Who has done the most to earn a rematch, and 2) Who’d be the most fun and/or marketable fight for the champ?

Right away that rules out Jose Aldo, I’m sorry to say. He hasn’t fought since his TKO loss to Holloway in June, and the fight was so one-sided that I don’t see anyone getting too excited about running it back.

So how about Ricardo Lamas? He’s riding a two-fight winning streak with two finishes over tough fighters, so that’s a plus. Still, it’s not like he was at the top of anybody’s contender list, and he doesn’t have a super strong fanbase pushing to see him get another shot.

That leaves Cub Swanson, a reliably exciting fighter with four straight wins, the last two of which came with “Fight of the Night” honors. MMA fans love them some Cubbie Sampson. He’s bound to give you a show in victory or defeat, and he seems very into the idea of stepping in as replacement, judging by his initial reaction to the Frankie Edgar injury news on Twitter.

The only problem is, if you pull Swanson out of his fight with Brian Ortega, you create a domino effect of booking problems for UFC matchmakers. But hey, that’s their problem.

That’s a very fair point. For as long as it lasted, Rose Namajunas looked spectacular in her UFC 217 title bout. She wasn’t the least bit intimidated by Joanna Jedrzejczyk, but she also didn’t get overly excited when the fight started to swing her way.

In short, she looked like a well-rounded, mature fighter, which is saying something for a 25-year-old champion with only 10 pro fights in under five years of competition.

The real test is what happens now. Winning a UFC title can change your life in both good and bad ways. Everything we’ve heard from her recently makes me think Namajunas can handle it, but it’ll be interesting to see what kind of challenge she faces in her first defense.

Jedrzejczyk had a long and dominant enough reign at strawweight that I think she deserves an immediate rematch – when she’s ready for it. But you’re right that she might be better off taking some time to rest and recover after that fight, especially since she still seems hazy about what happened there at the very end.

First of all, I totally want to hang out with your friend. Second, I’ve got to admit that my eyebrows were literally raised after I read your question.

But we want to be careful about this line of reasoning. Fighters can go on losing skids with or without the help of performance-enhancing drugs. This is just that kind of business. Failure can beget doubt, which begets all sorts of bad and desperate decisions, which begets more failure. We’ve seen it over and over in MMA.

And riddle me this: If Johny Hendricks’ current woes are all the result of getting off whatever you think he was on, all due to a fear of USADA, wouldn’t he have been tempted to get back on the good stuff and take his chances with the drug tests by now? I know I would.

Cris Cyborg wasn’t “installed” on the throne of the 145-pound division – she took it by force. From Strikeforce to Invicta FC to the UFC, she’s beaten the tar out of anyone willing to buy the ticket and take the ride.

As for why the division doesn’t function like all the others, part of it is the lack of naturally occurring depth. There just aren’t a ton of female fighters with the size to compete in the 145-pound division, and Cyborg’s already beaten most of the existing ones.

And so far, the UFC hasn’t seemed that interested in cultivating an actual division there, maybe because it fears there aren’t enough good fighters to populate it, especially since Bellator already has several ranked fighters in the division under contract. In the UFC’s eyes, Cyborg is the whole show at 145 pounds.

Her opponents have mostly been a rotating cast of 135-pounders who were convinced to move up and take their chances, and that didn’t end well for any of them. Perhaps as a result, the job of convincing them seems to be getting harder and harder.

I’ll believe the UFC as a boxing promoter when I see it, and even then I’m going to have some questions. Those questions may include, but are not limited to:

How are the payouts going to work, since top boxing talent usually gets paid a whole lot more than top MMA fighters?

And how can you oppose the Ali Act Expansion for MMA, but essentially admit that it’s fine for the boxing side of your business?

And speaking of the Ali Act, will the UFC try to require the same restrictive contracts of boxers that it does of MMA fighters?

Then there’s the other, arguably bigger question: Who is the intended audience for this? You need different fighting surfaces for the two different sports, so doing them both at the same event is tricky (ask Bellator). Plus, there’s not as much crossover between the two fanbases as people sometimes think, except when it comes to the few really big names in both sports.

I’m not saying the UFC can’t become a boxing promoter. What I am saying is that I wouldn’t be surprised if those “Zuffa Boxing” shirts become collector’s items soon. You know, in the same way that Atlanta Falcons 2017 Super Bowl Champions shirts are.

Short answer: no.

Slightly longer answer: depends on the circumstances, but still mostly no.

I’ve done battle with my nemesis Danny Downes on this topic before, but my position remains unchanged. I think there’s functionally very little difference between tapping to strikes and covering up in the fetal position while waiting for the referee to stop it. It makes no sense that we accept the latter as just something that happens, while the former makes a fighter an immediate object of scorn.

In fairness, what we reported is UFC President Dana White said the fight was happening. And if you’ve been following this sport for any length of time, you ought to know that White excels at the art of just saying stuff. This time, it seems like he announced a fight without even discussing it with at least one of the participants.

And wasn’t White the one who, just last week, complained about inaccurate reporting on MMA? Wasn’t he the one who claimed that there’s “nothing factual that’s ever written about this business”? If that’s true, maybe it’s because we’re too willing to take his word for it, regardless of how many times he lies to us.

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