A former UFC mainstay believes that Tony Ferguson’s days in the UFC are numbered.
Tony Ferguson’s 12-fight winning streak was once one of the biggest stories in all of MMA. It is an achievement that made him a people’s champ of sorts and one of the top pound-for-pound fighters in the promotion. However, 2020 took its toll on Ferguson, as this would be the only year in his nine-year UFC run that he has lost two fights, going 0-2 for the year at that. Many people believe that it will be hard for Tony Ferguson to bounce back and that he is on the decline. In the case of former longtime UFC official Big John McCarthy, he believes that, not unlike Yoel Romero, whatever rebounding Tony Ferguson does will happen outside of the UFC.
“I think they’re going to cut him,” McCarthy said on his Weighing In podcast with Josh Thomson. “I could be wrong about that but the reason I say it is first off, Tony has always had an adversarial relationship with certain people with the UFC. He’s felt like he’s been held back, cheated in certain things. And so you have that. That’s okay, you can say those things when you’re winning.
“But now you take a look at his last two performances — the Justin Gaethje fight, he fought his ass off but he got beat badly. And now this one, he got beat badly. So you look at your lightweights and you go, ‘alright, is Tony Ferguson going to be fighting for the title?’ That ain’t going to happen.”
McCarthy believes that in order for Tony Ferguson to re-enter the world-title picture at this point, he would need to string together another, albeit shorter, winning streak of four or five fights and that those wins would need to come against top-tier talent. Given how his last two fights have turned out, McCarthy believes it’s unlikely that Ferguson would achieve this. And if that’s the case, Tony Ferguson’s continuation in the UFC becomes pointless.
“So, he’s not going to fight for the title. So you’re going to keep him for what reasons now? So he can beat your young talent…? That’s not going to do you any good as a promotion. So I don’t know, I just look and say he might be one of the guys in that 60.”
This is a bold prediction by McCarthy and certainly qualifies as a hot take, but if shocking news comes down that Tony Ferguson has been released from the UFC, remember that you heard it from Big John first.
What do you think the odds are that John McCarthy is right that Tony Ferguson will be a victim of the UFC’s mass releases?
