UFC Lightweight Champion Conor McGregor has yet to announce his next move since suffering a TKO defeat to Floyd Mayweather in “The Money Fight.”
Max Holloway is the UFC Featherweight Champion and if McGregor decides to move back down to featherweight, then Holloway is confident that he would remain the real champion at 145.
“No (Holloway doesn’t mind McGregor returning to the division), because that means he’d have to fight my ass,” Holloway said on The MMA Hour. “If you want an ass whipping at 145, come on down. Everybody can get it. I’m here, I want to fight everyone. Being a champion now, I get to hang out with champions inside the organization, I get to be around other champions that are not even in our sport, and the mindset is different. It’s hard to go out there and protect something that you earned. I worked hard, I got this belt, I earned it. And it’s hard to find the motivation to be like, ‘I gotta keep earning this, and keep earning it, and keep earning it.’ It’s super easy to do what Conor does. He earned something then he looks over the fence, he looks for something new, and it’s very easy to be motivated for something new. If somebody told me you can go do boxing, it’s going to be way easier to get out of bed like, ‘Oh yeah, I get to try something new.’”
Holloway and Nate Diaz are the only two make to ever go the distance with McGregor in the UFC.
The featherweight champion also believes the whole “Mystic Mac” thing has come to an end.
“It already showed that he can lose to Nate and he can still hold this championship level mindset to his peers and and to his fans versus if he comes to fight me and he loses, then his fairy tale is done,” Holloway said. “His ‘champ champ’, this whole ‘mystic’ thing is done, that’s over with, and that’s the kind of person that I think he is. I don’t think he wants to risk that, especially against a guy like me.”
Although his next title defense has yet to be announced, it is expected that Holloway will face former UFC Lightweight Champion Frankie Edgar by the end of the year.
