Ferguson: B!@^$# McGregor has to defend vs. 216 winner or vacate

Tony Ferguson fights Kevin Lee for the interim lightweight title at UFC 216 on October 7. Interim title fights are held when the champ for whatever reason cannot defend his title in a timely manner. There is the expectation that a unification fight will be next for the new Interim champ.

Ferguson hasn’t lost in over five years, and is on a nine-fight win streak, three of them by Darse choke. He’s won six performance bonuses in the last five fights, and three straight Fight of the Nights.

However, the champ of his division is Conor McGregor, and Conor McGregor is different. It appears likely Notorious will next defend his title vs. Nate Diaz, maybe this year, maybe next year. Ferguson took part in a UFC 216 media conference call and explained what he wants.

The next fight for Conor should be whoever wins this interim lightweight title, said Ferguson, as transcribed by Shaun Al-Shatti for MMA Fighting. Regardless of winning or losing this, myself or if it’s Kevin Lee, that b**** needs to defend or vacate and he needs to unify that belt. Anything else, with as far as him trying to fight Nate and everything else, that’s the bulls*** rankings and everything else that the UFC stands for just out the window, man.

This has been my division before McNuggets even stepped into this b****. Even when I was at Paradigm Sports Management, he signed up at 145 pounds. The agreement was he wasn’t going to come up to 155 pounds, but that raised a conflict of interest and I’m pissed, so that b**** needs to fight me or he needs to fight the guy that’s holding the belt.

I mean, really? You have rankings for a reason. You have an interim belt for a reason — so you can unify the thing. The guy [Diaz] is what, a top-10? Not even a top-five? Kevin Lee’s got more heart than Nate, and I have more heart than this whole entire division. So if they want to put that fight together, then that’s great, but you know the fans will be pissed, because obviously they know that f***ing Diaz and Conor is going to make a lot of money, but the real righteous thing to do is to make sure the belts become unified. That’s what really needs to happen.

Money talks, bullsh*t walks, man. So obviously they’re going to protect their pocket and they’re going to keep McNuggets away from a real contender. Real belt or no belt, it doesn’t matter what anybody says, this is a belt that’s going to have to be unified, otherwise he’s going to have to defend or vacate.

Ferguson knows to get to the red panty night vs. McGregor, he has to beat Lee. Then he’ll worry about the red panty night. And for the record, that’s not his favorite panty color.

I don’t like red,” he explained. “I like blue. That’s my color. But red panty, green panty, it don’t f***ing matter. Whoever they put in front of me. And my first manager told me, ‘Tony, you make your money by winning,’ and that’s Brock Lesnar’s manager. He told me, ‘Don’t even worry about anything else, everything is going to fall into place.’ And I done kept that same attitude. I signed with my management and I kept the same attitude and I’m not changing any time soon.