Tony Ferguson Says McGregor vs Diaz 3 Throws Out ‘Everything UFC Stands For’

Tony Ferguson are just a week away from going to war together for the interim UFC lightweight title. Usually, this would give the victor a one-way ticket to fight the champion of their division in order to unify the titles. However, this isn’t happening, at least not yet. Every mention of Conor McGregor’s return fight suggests he’ll be fighting Nate Diaz to defend his lightweight title, maybe as early as March 2018. This is something that Ferguson just doesn’t think is right.

“The next fight for Conor [McGregor] should be whoever wins this interim lightweight title. Regardless of winning or losing this, myself or if it’s Kevin Lee, that b-tch needs to defend or vacate and he needs to unify that belt. Anything else, with as far as him trying to fight Nate [Diaz] and everything else, that’s the bullsh-t rankings and everything else that the UFC stands for just [going] out the window, man.”

Not Much For Shit Talking, But Man… The Top 5 In This Division Are A Bunch Of Pussies. All Talk No Walk. Atleast @MoTownPhenom Has Heart.

— Tony Ferguson (@TonyFergusonXT) September 28, 2017

“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 [lightweight]? 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-cking 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.” — Tony Ferguson speaking on the UFC 216 conference call.

It’s not just the UFC’s lightweight division though. Robert Whittaker captured the interim UFC middleweight title, yet Michael Bisping’s next fight is a defense against former welterweight king Georges St-Pierre. Whittaker will have to wait until that fight resolves itself before he can even begin to fight for the belt. If Nate Diaz and McGregor do show down in March, we’ll be well into Summer 2018 before the lightweight belts can be unified.

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 9/29/2017.