Photo Courtesy: Andrius Petrucenia
Number two ranked lightweight contender Tony Ferguson put on an outstanding performance against number six ranked lightweight contender Kevin Lee at UFC 216 where he would finish the fight via submission due to a triangle choke at 4:02 in round three and become the first interim Lightweight Champion.
Since Ferguson has pretty much guaranteed himself a shot against current champion Conor McGregor it looks like fans might finally get to see these two go at it inside the octagon.
That is until just a few days ago when rumors began to fly around that the trilogy fight between Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz for the lightweight championship would headline the end of the year card for UFC 219 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
President Dana White has stated before he is not interested in making the trilogy fight happen and wishes he never made the first fight happen in the first place, which is all mostly due to McGregor losing the first fight thus giving the superstar his first loss inside the octagon after he captured the featherweight title.
But with the UFC not having many high buyrates in pay-per-views so far this year as most have received 300,000 or less with UFC 214 being the only one coming close to a million buys (860,000), it now looks like the trilogy fight will make sense as the first two drew over a million with the first coming in at 1.5 million (UFC 196) and the second at 1.65 million (UFC 202).
With McGregor vs. Diaz being such a big draw for the company it would probably be the right thing to do by making these two go at it one last time with not only the possibility of being the biggest buyrate sale of the year but all time and could be just the fight to finally hit the two million buys for which White has been striving to reach for many years.
However, Ferguson might not be as big of a draw for McGregor as Diaz, he still has proven himself worthy of fighting for the gold and even give the champion a run for his money with his well-round boxing and jiu-jitsu/wrestling combinations for which fans would love to see how McGregor could measure up to.
Indeed, Diaz is one of the top boxers and jiu-jitsu specialist in the lightweight division and possibly the UFC He just does not seem as much of a threat to McGregor at Ferguson will probably be. Even the fact fans have already seen what he can do to McGregor and what McGregor can do to him makes the fight more predictable where nobody really knows what can happen in McGregor vs. Ferguson, so it would be a total surprise making everyone wonder if McGregor could successfully defend his belt or if Ferguson is out to prove to the world that the Irishman is not as tough as he is imagined to be.
No matter, who gets the shot fans just want to see McGregor get back on top and forget about his current loss to boxing champion Floyd Mayweather as they know he will be fun to watch and always bring out the best in what the UFC has to offer.
