Before I get into delving into this topic, I just wanted to give a quick review of UFC 253. We crowned a new Light Heavyweight Champion in Jan Blachowicz, who beat Dominick Reyes. We saw Jan target the midsection of Dom catching him with a the same kick to the body on 3 occasions in round one before knocking him out in the second.
Brandon Royval looks like a star, I think he could definitely be someone who can linger around the top 3 spots in the Flyweight division.
Also, Israel Adesanya retained his Middleweight title in dominant fashion over Paulo Costa. I thought Izzy would retain but I expected Costa to do more in the fight. To be honest, I don’t see anyone beating Adesanya in the middleweight division. I think if he loses, it’ll be in a fight where he moves up a division.
Now, onto McGregor vs Pacquiao. Recently, McGregor released some private conversations with UFC president Dana White on who he should fight next. In the screenshots, there’s mentions of Diego Sanchez, an unranked legend of MMA that just lost at UFC 253 to Jake Matthews.
To me this doesn’t make any sense, I don’t see why Conor would want to fight Sanchez other than to collect a quick paycheck and an easy win. We were supposed to get a fight between Dustin Poirier and Tony Ferguson at UFC 254 which has been called off, causing rumours that Conor may step in to fight Dustin.
However, why would Conor go from wanting to fight a fighter at the tailend of his career that clearly isn’t as good as he used to be, to a fighter in his prime, who if not for Khabib Nurmagomedov being one of the GOAT’s would most likely be UFC Lightweight champion?
The simple answer is money, and this is where Pacquiao comes into it. If the Pacquiao fight was confirmed, the promoter of the fight would want Conor and Manny to not say anything about the fight as they would want to release the first bit of attention from this superfight.
However, because the fighters themselves have come out and said they want to fight each other, all the boxing championships and promoters are going to be crawling over each other so their company can host the second biggest combat sports event of all time (McGregor vs Mayweather is no.1).
If this fight happens, I think it’s safe to conclude that Conor doesn’t care as much about winning anymore, as we all know Pacquiao will school him in the boxing ring. However, I’m sure the $50 million dollars will make up for that pretty easily.
TheWrestlingFallacy 