With Conor McGregor’s next fight – a rematch against Nate Diaz – confirmed for August at 170lb, it remains questionable whether or not the featherweight champion will ever return to the UFC’s 145lb division.
As of right now, it seems even McGregor’s head coach, John Kavanagh, is unsure.
“The short answer is I don’t know,” Kavanagh told MMAUnderground. “I’m very intrigued to see the (Jose) Aldo and (Frankie) Edgar fight.”
With McGregor’s future relating to 145lb up in the air, Aldo and Edgar are set to contest for the UFC interim featherweight title at UFC 200 next month. Should McGregor return to featherweight, he will fight the winner to unify the belts.
Kavanagh has already made his feelings regarding McGregor’s featherweight cut clear. The Irish champ is an exceptionally big athlete for the weight class, walking at around 170lb between fights, and his head coach has expressed concern that the cut takes too much out of him.
But if the interest is there for McGregor and his camp as well as the fans then there’s every chance that he makes the cut once more.
“I hope Aldo is fully recovered from the bad knockout,” Kavanagh said. “I thought (Chad) Mendes went back in there really quick after the knockout against Conor. People don’t realize the damage it does – it takes a long time to recover, and I think Mendes went down quicker in that fight because of that. Maybe if he’d let himself rest a bit more he might have had more fight for Edgar. I hope that’s not the case for Aldo, (I hope) we get to see a solid version of Aldo and a new kind of improved Edgar, and see what different from the first fight.
“So, yeah, let’s see that, and assess after the rematch. It’s kind of those two names and (Max) Holloway kind of in the mix, so it’s an interesting time.”
