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Conor McGregor Obtains Boxing License: Could Bout With Floyd Mayweather Be Next?

Published on: December 1, 2016 at 2:18 PM
By Jason Fletcher

According to FOX Sports , UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor has been issued a boxing license in the state of California with more states to follow in the future. This may be the greatest indication that McGregor is serious about getting into a boxing ring with Floyd Mayweather Jr. after their constant trash talk over the last year or so.

Obtaining the boxing license only adds to a busy three weeks for Conor as he became the first fighter in UFC history to ever hold two belts at the same time after he defeated Eddie Alvarez via a second round KO/TKO to become the UFC lightweight champion. McGregor already held the featherweight belt after defeating Jose Aldo at UFC 194.

After winning the lightweight belt, UFC president Dana White announced that McGregor would be out for awhile as he awaited the birth of his first child. Conor’s longtime girlfriend, Dee Devlin, is due in May, 2017 , according to Mirror .

If all of that wasn’t enough, White and the UFC made the decision to strip Conor of the featherweight belt last week and the details about how the UFC made the decision has angered a lot of fans.

At UFC 206, Daniel Cormier was set to face Anthony “Rumble” Johnson in the main event in a bout for the light heavyweight title. Unfortunately, Cormier tore his abductor tendon during training and had to pull out of the fight. The UFC thought about finding a replacement to fight Johnson, but he gave the impression that he would rather wait until Cormier was healthy enough to fight.

The situation left the UFC without a main event for UFC 206, so the company came up with the idea of moving the co-main event, which featured a featherweight bout between Max Holloway and Anthony Pettis, to the main event. But without another title fight on the card, the UFC would run the risk of having terrible pay-per-view numbers.

The solution the UFC came up with was to strip Conor McGregor of the featherweight belt and then turn the bout between Holloway and Pettis into an interim featherweight title fight. The company then also named Jose Aldo the titleholder of the UFC featherweight belt which means that the winner of Pettis and Holloway will face Aldo at a later date to unify the belt.

As you can imagine, McGregor’s coach wasn’t happy with the UFC’s decision.

“It was a very messy set of circumstances which led to doing it,” John Kavanagh said. “They lost a main event [at UFC 206] and then they haphazardly threw together a new main event.”

“Conor has only been 11 months since he won that title,” Kavanagh said. “There have been many, many examples of fighters waiting 15 months, 18 months before defending it. He’s 11 months and they stripped him of it. I thought it was very shortsighted by the UFC how they went about doing it.”

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out in the future. If Conor continues to obtain boxing licenses in other states and truly does pursue a bout with Floyd Mayweather Jr., it would easily be the biggest pay-per-view of all time and could make both sides a lot of money. But where would that leave Conor in the UFC?

McGregor is a rare breed, nd he could easily go into boxing or WWE and make just as much if not more money than he’s making in the UFC. Conor is also a savvy businessman who always keeps his options open in order to create the most leverage possible and it’s resulted in him becoming the biggest ticket in the UFC.

Would it be possible that Conor McGregor decides to do something else with his life after his baby is born in May? Will the fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. ever actually happen?

Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

[Featured Image by Michael Reeves/Getty Images]

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