Maybe now dos Anjos will get his overdue shot at McGregor
Four years after he was originally supposed to fight Conor McGregor, Rafael dos Anjos is still trying to get in the cage with the Irishman.
After an impressive win over Paul Felder — who stepped in on only five days' notice — in the main event of the UFC's Saturday night show in Las Vegas, dos Anjos took his shot and took aim at McGregor. The two were initially supposed to fight for the lightweight belt in 2016, but dos Anjos had to withdraw due to an injury. That set into motion a sequence of events that saw McGregor fighting Nate Diaz, while dos Anjos lost the belt to Eddie Alvarez that summer.
With lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov retiring last month, there's some uncertainty about what's happening at the top of the lightweight division. McGregor's supposed to fight Dustin Poirier in January, but after that, who knows? Maybe it's finally time to get the dos Anjos-McGregor matchup we thought we'd never get to see.
Here are some take-aways from Saturday's fights:
NOTHING LOST
Saturday's loss doesn't reflect particularly poorly on Felder. It shouldn't affect his standing in the lightweight division, either.
Felder took the fight on incredibly short notice and managed to put on a pretty decent show. The fact that judge Chris Lee scored the fight in Felder's favour makes absolutely no sense at all, but even in defeat the veteran still showed what he's made of.
Felder is going to remain visible in the MMA world one way or the other because of his role as a commentator on UFC broadcasts. It was nice to hear him say he'd rekindled his love for actually competing in the sport after Saturday's loss. Felder is one of the good guys in the sport and his uncanny ability to produce engaging, entertaining fights means he should always have a place taking on ranked contenders at lightweight.
A LOT OF OPTIONS
The McGregor fight is only going to happen for dos Anjos if the Irishman loses to Poirier in January. If he wins, the UFC is going to have McGregor fighting for the lightweight title. It wouldn't make sense for them to do anything else.
So where would that leave dos Anjos? There are really no bad options for dos Anjos at this point. After a couple of years at welterweight, he's back in the mix at 155 pounds and if there's anyone in the top 10 who needs an opponent, the UFC can easily slot dos Anjos in and nobody's going to complain.
KHAOS TIME
Khaos Williams has fought twice in the UFC. The two fights have lasted a combined 57 seconds. Maybe we don't actually know how good the awesomely-named Williams can be, but what we've seen so far has been spectacular.
He's got real power in his hands and while it's still too early to really start talking about what sort of potential he might have, that's not his fault. We need to see some more cage time from him, and it's hard to do that when you're finishing off opponents so quickly.
WHAT A COMEBACK
Sean Strickland was out of competition for two years after a devastating motorcycle accident.
His return to the cage has been pretty spectacular. On Saturday night, Strickland put on a show and smashed up Brendan Allen for the better part of two rounds before the referee mercifully stepped in to end things.
The win came just two weeks after Strickland had wrecked Jack Marshman on their Halloween fight.
UP NEXT
UFC 256 goes down next Saturday and it's a weird one.
There's nothing wrong with having a pay-per-view headlined by flyweight champion Deiveson Figueiredo defending his belt against Alex Perez, but it feels strange to have women's flyweight queen Valentina Shevchenko in the co-main against Jennifer Maia.
Shevchenko has a considerably higher profile than Figueiredo.