UFC 206: Beginning the Road Back to a Credible Featherweight Champion

Conor McGregor is no longer the featherweight champion.

Well, maybe he is. He says he still has the belt to prove otherwise, and he never lost as a UFC featherweight, but whatever.

You can think it’s stupid or you can think it’s about time someone else got a chance to be the best at 145 pounds, but either way, the weight class is moving on.

Jose Aldo is some sort of semi-champion, a man the UFC is trying to give a title to but one who repels the notion in favor of trying to fight McGregor at lightweight for some reason.

UFC 206 on Saturday is headlined by an interim title fight between Max Holloway and Anthony Pettis, a fight that might well crown an official champion if Aldo remains obstinate and McGregor is truly gone from the division. But only if Holloway wins, because of course Pettis missed weight for a bout occurring amid one of the stranger title pictures combat sports has ever seen and can no longer qualify for the gold.

"

"Who did you beat for the title Max?"

"A guy who was 1-3 in his last four and missed weight."#SuperBowlofMMA https://t.co/d49jXrILIf

— Jonathan Snowden (@JESnowden) December 9, 2016"

It’s an odd time in a sport born almost totally of oddity, a series of circumstances that’s never been seen before.

So how does the division get back to being led by a champion with some semblance of credibility? That might take a little more work than stripping a guy under cover of darkness and watching others abstractly circle one another over the remains.

The first step is going to revolve around figuring out McGregor. Those who despise the Irishman or dislike how he held up the division for most of 2016 won’t love that, but it remains the truth.

If McGregor remains insistent that he’s a two-weight world champion when he comes back next year and decides he’s coming back to 145 pounds at any point thereafter, it’s not going to matter who has the gold when he does. He’s going to be fighting them, and in the eyes of many, he'd be doing it as the uncrowned king. That’s the power he holds as the biggest star in the sport.

The next step is going to involve figuring out Aldo.

Last seen in the cage rolling Frankie Edgar at UFC 200 with a focus that had been absent in his efforts for quite a while, Aldo has since teased retirement, a career in another sport, a meeting with the UFC that may or may not have gone anywhere and the aforementioned lightweight bout with McGregor.

If this man is going to be the featherweight champion and the UFC isn’t going to make him beat anyone to claim the throne, someone should probably make an effort to confirm he’s interested in the job because it’s a pretty dubious proposition to anyone watching from the outside. He’s come up with almost every reason imaginable as to why he’s seemingly uninterested in the role, so getting him to do it might require more than just saying he’s in.

The final step, and maybe the most important given the extreme flux of the two incontestable featherweight top dogs, is figuring out exactly what’s about to go down at UFC 206. Bizarrely conceived interim belt notwithstanding, Holloway is about to headline an event, and president Dana White is going to strap that belt on him if he wins no matter what.

Should that happen, Holloway is going to be thrust into the most certain position of anyone at the weight, holding some kind of belt and presumably having the clearest desire to defend it. Given how McGregor and Aldo have been treating the title, that’s about the best thing for its credibility at this juncture: having someone willing to accept the role of champion and take on a challenger.

Such a willingness will be the quickest way to forget the mess the top of the class has been since McGregor obliterated Aldo in December 2015 because it’s that willingness that will fuel new rivalries, new defenses, new champions and, eventually, a new legitimacy.

And if the UFC wishes to do its part in that new legitimacy? The company should give Aldo an ultimatum to accept its offer of being elevated to featherweight champion—not entirely unlike the ultimatum for McGregor to give up his title after UFC 205—and be prepared to move on accordingly.

If Aldo accepts the championship by the end of the calendar year, for example, book the unification with Holloway and act like none of this circus ever happened. If he doesn’t, make Holloway the undisputed world champion and hope that McGregor stays gone so that you never have to deal with him running roughshod over the weight class again.

Credibility doesn’t come easy with world titles. It took Aldo years before people truly understood his excellence, and it took an athlete as unique as McGregor to beat him and elevate the featherweight title that much further. Credibility can, however, be undone easily with world titles, and the UFC has been forced to confront that over the past few weeks.

UFC 206 is the beginning of a way back. For the sake of everyone involved, here’s hoping the promotion gets it right.

Follow me on Twitter: @matthewjryder!