Rafael Dos Anjos: Conor McGregor fight would be ‘worth the drop in weight’

If it wasn’t for former UFC lightweight champion Rafael Dos Anjos, we never would have seen the two wars between Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz.

Before Eddie Alvarez was the lightweight champion, that label belonged to Dos Anjos who was supposed to be McGregor’s first champion vs champion bout as McGregor came up from the featherweight division that he was holding the title in.

Unfortunately for Dos Anjos, a broken foot forced him out of the biggest bout of his career. Thus leading to Diaz stepping in on short notice.

Now a few years removed from this time and both McGregor and Dos Anjos are coming off of losses in different divisions. McGregor at lightweight, and Dos Anjos at welterweight.

But as he only gets older, Dos Anjos admits he is starting to look more for those ‘exciting’ fights and McGregor is definitely one that he missed out on in his career to this point.

“I’m at that stage of my career where I need fights that excite me,” Dos Anjos told Helen Yee. “I have 39 fights and [I’m] 34 years old. I still have a lot on me but now I have to have some fights that excite me. I don’t want to fight regular guys just to drop to lightweight, kill myself, and it not be worth the money.

“A super fight with Conor for example, I think it would be worth the drop in weight.”

After having seen how current champion Khabib Nurmagomedov did against McGregor, one would assume that it further gives Dos Anjos confidence as he’s one who has also found success in his career by being a tough pressure fighter.

“No, [I wasn’t surprised by the results of the fight with Nurmagomedov],” Dos Anjos said. “I knew for Conor’s game [that] Khabib would be a very tough style, it’s a very bad match for him. Conor tends to break a little bit. As things get tougher, he tends to break. If everything goes his way, he’ll grow balls but when things get bad for his side, his balls shrink so I wasn’t surprised for that outcome.

“I’m not afraid to take any shots, [a fight with Conor] would be better than my last fights where I fought big wrestlers trying to wrestle me and hold me down and stuff like that.”

Although the likelihood of that match-up materializing at this point seems very uncertain, Dos Anjos still believes that he could finish McGregor over the course of five rounds.

Would you be interested in seeing this fight be re-made at some point?

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 2/12/2019