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While he’s only fought once in the UFC since 2016 and was beaten pretty convincingly by Khabib Nurmagomedov last October, Conor McGregor remains the biggest star in the promotion, and ‘The Notorious One’ never has his name far from the MMA news.
But who will be the opponent for Conor Mcgregor's next fight? A fight with McGregor is arguably just as big for a fighter these days as a UFC title shot simply because it’s almost a guarantee of big money. McGregor on the headline of a pay-per-view basically means over a million buys at this point, and that means money for everyone involved.
But of course, Conor himself doesn’t want to fight just anybody. The fight has to make sense from his standpoint, and of course, in terms of the size of the fight, the bigger, the better.
Here are 4 fighters Conor McGregor has called out for a fight in 2019.
#1 Donald Cerrone
It was back in November 2018 – right after Donald Cerrone submitted Mike Perry at Welterweight – that talk began of a potential fight between ‘Cowboy’ and Conor McGregor. But despite Cerrone calling the Irish superstar out, at that point it didn’t seem like McGregor – or UFC President Dana White – were down to make such a fight, with White flat out denying any knowledge of it.
That seemed to change in January, though, after Cerrone knocked out hot prospect Alexander Hernandez on the UFC’s first show of 2019. Following that impressive performance, McGregor instantly took to Twitter to state that he’d be willing to fight ‘Cowboy’ at some point later in the year.
The fight still hasn’t been made official by the UFC, but it does appear to make sense for all parties – and most recently, Cerrone took to Instagram to claim that the two men would be fighting for an interim Lightweight title at some point in 2019 – which would make all UFC fans happy.
#2 Khabib Nurmagomedov
After their first fight in October 2018 drew a record pay-per-view buyrate for the UFC – 2.4m buys – it was a no brainer that the UFC would look to book a rematch between McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov, and unsurprisingly – despite taking an absolute beating in the first fight – ‘The Notorious One’ has always been down for the fight at some point in 2019.
Khabib himself has seemed uncommittal about a rematch, stating that after tapping out in their first fight, McGregor doesn’t deserve one, but that doesn’t seem to be the case from Conor’s point of view, as the Irishman has always suggested that he wants to do the fight again – his first Tweet post-UFC 229 in fact stated that he was “looking forward” to the rematch.
There’s no doubt that a second Khabib/McGregor fight would do big business at the box office, but it does seem like the UFC might go in another direction for now – after all, if McGregor were to pick up a big win prior to stepping in with Khabib again, the hype might get even bigger – making it the biggest fight in UFC history for a second time.
#3 Nate Diaz
Despite McGregor defeating Nate Diaz in their August 2016 rematch following his initial loss to the controversial fighter 5 months before, the bad blood between the two has never truly gone away. The fact that the second fight was so close has always meant that a trilogy match would probably work as a pay-per-view draw, but until recently, McGregor – probably distracted by his feud with Khabib Nurmagomedov – has remained pretty quiet on the issue.
That all changed last weekend, though, when Anderson Silva called for a rematch with former foe Nick Diaz at UFC 237, which is scheduled for Curitiba, Brazil, in May 2019. Almost immediately, ‘The Notorious One’ then took to Twitter, suggesting that if the UFC could get the Silva/Diaz fight signed, he’d be willing to fight Nate Diaz on the same card.
The likelihood of this actually happening at UFC 237 seems pretty slim – the build to a McGregor/Diaz trilogy fight would probably need more than a couple of months and the UFC has already suggested that Amanda Nunes vs. Holly Holm will headline that card – but later in 2019? It’s definitely a possibility, particularly if the UFC doesn’t want McGregor to rematch Khabib right away.
#4 Anderson Silva
Speaking of legendary former Middleweight champion Anderson Silva, despite McGregor only ever fighting as high as 170lbs – and Silva never dropping below 185lbs during his UFC career – ‘The Notorious One’ actually called the Brazilian veteran out last week following his loss to Israel Adesanya at UFC 234, suggesting that it’d be an “honour” to face such a legend.
It wasn’t the first time such a fight had been spoken of. Back in October 2018, Silva had suggested that he’d be down for a fight with McGregor, suggesting that it’d be a martial arts challenge rather than being all about money, and that the two could fight at a catchweight of 180lbs.
Unfortunately for any fans looking forward to a clash between the Irishman and the Brazilian, it doesn’t seem like we’ll be seeing it any time soon. When asked about the possibility of the fight, UFC President Dana White stated that he “didn’t like it at all” – perhaps due to the massive gap in weight between the two fighters – and given that in the UFC, what Dana says goes, we probably shouldn’t hold our breath to see McGregor vs. Silva any time soon.
