McGregor holds all the UFC cards after comeback victory

LAS VEGAS » After three years without a victory, Conor McGregor needed only 40 seconds to reclaim his place at the center of the mixed martial arts world.

McGregor’s dynamic stoppage of Donald Cerrone in UFC 246 on Saturday night put the Irish superstar firmly in control of the future of two UFC divisions.

Every elite lightweight and welterweight will practically beg for his shot against a fighter who still commands the world’s attention like nobody else. A refocused McGregor seems eager to make up for lost time after three years of inactivity and outside-thecage misbehavior, suggesting he could fight three more times this year.

“The whole world lights up when I fight,” McGregor said. “So I want to get back out there again.”

He hadn’t made a decision by the time he left TMobile Arena late Saturday night with a broad smile on his face and a bottle of his own branded whiskey in hand. McGregor plans to speak with UFC President Dana White and billionaire ex-UFC owner Lorenzo Fertitta before he decides whether to pursue a championship belt, a revenge fight, an absurdly lucrative boxing match or any combination of the three.

The contenders already are lining up.

Popular welterweight brawler Jorge Masvidal would welcome a showdown, while welterweight champion Kamaru Usman would love to defend his title against McGregor. Both fighters watched McGregor’s victory from cageside, and Masvidal even tried to goad McGregor in curious fashion by wearing the same Versace robe that McGregor famously wore a few years ago to an open workout.

Lightweight contender Justin Gaethje fights in a reckless, crowd-pleasing style guaranteed to make a compelling matchup for the similarly aggressive McGregor. Another mustsee bout would be a third fight with imperious veteran Nate Diaz, who fought twice in 2019 after his own three-year break.

But White wants McGregor to wait for a fight against lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov, who beat McGregor in October 2018 and subsequently sparked an ugly brawl outside the cage. The bad feelings from that promotion haven’t healed, and White believes the rematch could rival the profitability of McGregor’s boxing match with Floyd Mayweather.

“With how Khabib won the first time and how famous Khabib has become, we’re looking at HaglerHearns,” White said. “We’re looking at like Ali-Foreman, Ali-Frazier. This is a massive fight with global appeal. This is the fight that you make. This is the fight that makes sense.”

But Nurmagomedov is booked to face Tony Ferguson at UFC 249 in April, and McGregor would prefer not to wait until late summer for his next bout. Instead, he half-seriously predicted the Nurmagomedov-Ferguson bout will be scrapped and he’ll be forced to step in.