Last night, as we do for every UFC event, I sat down in my apartment with my boy Javier Burillo to watch UFC 248, which turned out to offer up a mixed bag of emotions. The co-main event between Weili Zhang and Joanna Jedrzejczyk was an absolute riot of a fight, whereas the other main event between Israel Adesanya and Yoel Romero was incredibly poor. During the event Javier and I got to talking about Khabib and Connor McGregor, and whether or not we will ever see the second fight between the two, which Connor certainly wants having lost the first one, let’s take a look then at whether or not this is likely to happen.
Connor Motivation
Connor naturally wants this fight becasue of how her was dismantled by Khabib in the first fight between the two, ,something which most believe that caught Connor by surprise. The only time in that fight that Connor looked at all in control was when the two were standing toe to toe, but even then the Russian caught him with a clean shot which rocked McGregor. During the fight we heard Connor telling Khabib that all of the smack talk was ‘just business’ but this time around there really is bad blood between the two, following the fall out after the fight when everyone entered the ring, and the Tweets which each have been sending to one another.
Khabib
Khabib is someone who appears that he is not in the fight game for money, which means that there is far less allure to a fight with McGregor than many think. Khabib has already beaten Connor once, and he did so very convincingly, leaving a rematch sort of unnecessary. Khabib doesn’t like Connor by all accounts but that is not enough for him to go back to fight him, and risk those belts.
Ferguson
The real moment that we are waiting for in terms of where or not Connor and Khabib fight again will come down to the fight which Khabib has against Ferguson, which looks set to be a cracker. We know that Connor is waiting in the wings should either competitor pull out, as they have done before, but so far it looks full steam ahead. If Khabib beats Ferguson then we may well see a McGregor fight next ,but if Tony wins then you just know that we’ll be eating for a rematch between the two before any talk about Connor happens, becasue Khabib is going to want those belts back.
Ultimately McGregor is still a great fighter who can take on anyone in multiple divisions, we expect him to fight Gaethje at some point and potentially another fight with Poirier, at the end of the day the only way that this fight happens for me, is if McGregor becomes number one contender, at which point the UFC will be putting massive amounts of pressure on Khabib to have the fight which the world has been waiting for.
