Maybe the wording is a bit different, but UFC president Dana White confirmed it was Conor McGregor’s decision to relinquish the featherweight title.
Some, including McGregor’s head coach, have called into question the UFC’s move of making Jose Aldo the featherweight champion and taking McGregor’s dual-division crown status away.
But as White told Yahoo! Sports, “Notorious” was in the loop the entire way through.
“He’s (John Kavanagh is) misinformed,” White said. “Yeah, he doesn’t know all that has gone on, I guess. Do you think I just did this? This was Conor’s decision.
“Look, I let Conor fight (Nate) Diaz and then, I let him fight Diaz again,. Then, there was the whole 155-pound thing I let him do. But at the end of the day, him doing that tied up the division for a year. There’s a logjam there and a lot of guys were (angry).”
McGregor added the lightweight title to his resume last month with a victory over Eddie Alvarez. Last year, he won the featherweight belt by knocking Aldo out, but never defended it.
Max Holloway will now face Anthony Pettis for the interim featherweight title, with the winner meeting Aldo in 2017 to unify the belts.
“This was my way to fix the logjam,” White said. “I wanted Aldo to fight Holloway for the belt, but he needed more time. So I looked at it and I said, well, it makes sense to make Aldo the champion and then have Holloway and Pettis fight for the interim title, and when Jose’s ready, barring any crazy injuries, the winner can fight him.”
