Owen Roddy is the longtime striking coach for UFC Lightweight Champion and UFC Featherweight Champion Conor McGregor, he believes that Khabib Nurmagomedov may be next in line for a title shot, but he doesn’t believe that the fans are excited to see them fight.
"You can't really doubt Khabib at this stage now," he said on The MMA Hour. "He's a phenomenal grappler, a phenomenal wrestler, but I don't know whether the excitement is there. Obviously, for Conor it's about the pay-per-views, about the money. Whether Khabib will hit the pay-per-views for him, I don't know, but he's definitely there. And he poses a different threat, so it would be good to try and work out the strikes that are going to land on him. He can be hit as well, I will say that. He got hit a bit (against Horcher) and the same again (with Johnson),” he said. “I believe that if you give Conor a chance to land once, I don't know whether people can come back from that. But it would be definitely an interesting fight. They're the three names I suppose: Khabib, Woodley — because it would be just insane. Can you imagine the excitement of that? That would be crazy — and then obviously you can't argue with the Nate fight again.”
While McGregor’s next fight isn’t going to be known for a while now, his training camp is in the dark as well right now.
"Who knows? I always say after a fight, I never know what's going to happen, but that's part of the excitement,” he said. “Conor could just say, ‘yeah, I'm going to fight a middleweight.' And he could do it, because everything he says he's going to do, he does. He backs it up,” said Roddy.
McGregor isn’t expected to compete again until May 2017 so he can be around for the birth of his first child.
