Interesting change of direction from inside Conor McGregor's camp.
In a poll we conducted early last week, we asked who you would like to see McGregor fight in his next outing.
67% of you called for newly crowned UFC lightweight champion Tony Ferguson to take on 'The Notorious' next. Nate Diaz was second, on 19%, with featherweight champion Max Holloway and UFC legend Georges St-Pierre only picking up a handful of the votes.
We ran a similar poll, on Twitter, after McGregor's boxing loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Ferguson took that too. Now that he has the interim strap, and another impressive performance in the bank, the calls for 'El Cucuy' to take on the Dubliner have grown.
There could be good news on the horizon for the 67%. We already had McGregor simply posting 'Tony' on social media after Ferguson had claimed the current 155lbs king had dared not mention his name.
https://twitter.com/TheNotoriousMMA/status/918871919293882369
And, despite assertions from coaches John Kavanagh and Owen Roddy that a Nate Diaz trilogy fight would be their preferred option, the latest from the the McGregor camp is angling towards a Ferguson bout.
During
an interview with Karyn Bryant on MMA Heat, Artem Lobov said:
"Now that [Mayweather] is over, now he's back to defending his belt. In my eyes, of course he's going to fight Tony Ferguson.
"Why wouldn't he fight Tony? His belt is on the line now. Some guy has this fake belt around his waist. Conor wants to just take that away.
"In my eyes, 100% he is going to fight Tony. I mean who else is he going to fight? Why wouldn't he fight Tony and why wouldn't he defend that belt? That belt means a lot to Conor. He has dreamed from a very, very long time ago of having that belt.
"It is going to be damn, damn hard to take that belt from him. He is going to be defending that belt for a long, long time."
Of course, this is just an opinion from Lobov but it is another step away from that purported Diaz fight towards what would be McGregor's first ever title defence in his MMA career.
