Coach calls UFC’s decision to strip Conor McGregor of title ‘ridiculous'; Cormier responds to being blamed

Daniel Cormier’s removal from the main event at UFC 206 has caused a ripple effect throughout the MMA world that ended up seeing Conor McGregor having to “relinquish” his UFC featherweight title.

The light heavyweight champion was scheduled to defend his title in a rematch with Anthony Johnson at the pay-per-view event on Dec. 10 in Toronto. However, his injury caused the UFC to elevate the co-main event between Anthony Pettis and Max Holloway to the main event and turned that bout into a UFC interim featherweight title fight. But in order to do so the UFC had to promote fellow interim titleholder Jose Aldo to full titleholder and strip McGregor of the title he won last December when he knocked Aldo out in 13 seconds.

It’s a messy road that nobody seems to be happy with. But McGregor’s massive fan base decided to blame Cormier for the sequence of events.

“Just think about how ridiculous that is, that it’s my fault Conor McGregor got stripped,” Cormier told “The MMA Hour.” “I didn’t say ‘I’m not going to fight so he can lose his belt.’ It doesn’t matter to me.”

Cormier ultimately said that the decision to strip McGregor will probably affect his fans more than it does the Irishman because he has already made history as a two-time champion and he can “do whatever he wants.”

While McGregor has remained silent since the announcement, his coach aired out his grievances in an interview with “The Red FM Breakfast Show.”

“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, while citing the move as “ridiculous” by the UFC. “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.”

No matter how you slice it, the decision has been considered very unpopular with fans of the sport and it’s going to take a lot to justify anybody but McGregor as the UFC featherweight champ.