Dana White finally confirmed that Conor McGregor would be stripped of his UFC lightweight title, with Khabib Nurmagomedov and Max Holloway fighting for the belt. Typically it didn't take the Notorious long to reply.
Ever since UFC announced that Khabib and Tony Ferguson would be fighting for the title at UFC 223 it's been expected that it meant McGregor, who won the belt in November 2016 and hasn't fought in UFC since, would be losing the title.
Check out our interview with McGregor last year:
However White has failed to make it official all throughout the build up to the fight. Confusion reigned even more when Ferguson was replaced by featherweight champion Max Holloway because of injury.
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Finally the UFC president has confirmed McGregor will no longer have the title saying at the fight's press conference, "We're not stripping Tony Ferguson. Tony Ferguson isn't being stripped, the only one that's losing a belt here is Conor. Conor is losing the belt. These two are fighting for the belt."
"The interim these two were supposed to fight for, fight doesn't happen, now one of these guys will be the champion. Tony is still the number one contender."
And of course it didn't take long for the Irishman, who has now lost two titles without losing a fight, to respond on Twitter:
If Holloway upsets the odds on Saturday night and beats Khabib then he'll hold both the belts that McGregor held after beating Eddie Alvarez over a year ago and has had taken away from him due to his inactivity.
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Should Khabib win then, with White calling Ferguson the number one contender, UFC faces the prospect of trying to make the fight between the pair finally happen, after falling through four times already, and the president didn't sound too excited by that prospect saying, "It's the last fight on earth that I want to make again. This will be five times - that's insane - but obviously, however this thing plays out on Saturday, we'll go from there."
Here's a list of some of our favourite McGregor quotes:
White also confirmed the Irishman would be back in the octagon sometime this year adding, "Conor McGregor is 100 percent coming back this year," with a return in September widely rumoured.
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McGregor will remain the shadow hovering over the division until he returns, until then he'll be claiming he is the champ.
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