Despite being the only person to hold two-division titles at the same time for Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), Conor McGregor has yet to defend his Lightweight title and never got the chance to do the same for the Featherweight strap before eventually getting stripped.
In fact, “Notorious” shouldn’t even call himself the true 155-pound champion, according to Kevin Lee, as the fiery Irishman only has one fight at 155 pounds to his credit -- a title-winning bout against Eddie Alvarez at UFC 205.
Meanwhile, Lee says he has been tearing it up at 155 pounds while McGregor made a name for himself in the “baby boy division,” which is commonly known as the 145-pound weight class.
“Conor’s a paper champion, we all know that. He’s got one fight at 155 and he walks around calling himself the champion. It doesn’t make any sense,” said Lee during a recent appearance on UFC Unfiltered.
“Tony Ferguson, he’s got 12 fights and I got 10 at lightweight. He is down there at the baby boy division. He did his thing, he wrecked things there, but, it’s a different type of ball game up here.”
Lee and Ferguson are set to collide at UFC 216 on October 7, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada for the interim lightweight strap, while McGregor is set to take on Floyd Mayeather this weekend (Sat., Aug, 26, 2017) in a highly-anticipated boxing match.
If all goes as planned, “The Motown Phenom” will win the interim strap, defend it, and then unify it against “Notorious” once he gets through the “old” boxing champion.
“To me he ain’t really the champ anyway. Once I get the title and I defend it once, maybe against Khabib or somebody like that, then that makes the (McGregor) fight even bigger,” proclaimed Lee.
“I think the competitor in McGregor is going to get up for it because he is coming off these, fighting an old retired dude to fighting a hungry lion that is still out there and is going to be a world champion,” he concluded.
While McGregor fully intends on returning to UFC action, there are no guarantees he will come back to defend his 155-pound strap, as the allure of a certain trilogy fight is still lingering.