Conor McGregor the odd man out in UFC 249 shake-up as Justin Gaethje vs Tony Ferguson leaves him in cold

Conor McGregor talked excitedly about 2020 being a “season” for him, with plenty of big fights on the table as he announced him return to the UFC stage.

First, take out Donald Cerrone – mission accomplished, in devastating fashion. Then onto Khabib Nurmagomedov, Jorge Masvidal, Kamaru Usman, Nate Diaz or a combination of any of them.

The Irishman fought Cerrone at 170lbs so he could turn around quickly and fight UFC lightweight champion Khabib or Tony Ferguson, should either drop out of the fight.

There was another name in the frame, too – Justin Gaethje.

“Maybe I’ll get through Donald and I’ll have a quick turnaround against Justin,” McGregor told The Mac Life YouTube channel in January. “So maybe that’s what will happen. But Justin is on the list, no doubt.”

Well, Khabib vs Ferguson did indeed fall apart for a fifth time. It’s not McGregor filling in, though, but the No 4-ranked Gaethje, with “The Notorious” stranded in his native Ireland amid the Covid-19 outbreak.

UFC 249: Dana ‘starting to believe’ Khabib vs Ferguson is ‘cursed’

“It’s a no-brainer,” Dana White told ESPN’s Brett Okamoto this week. “Everybody felt if Conor was gonna get shot at Khabib that actually Gaethje should get it before Conor. It couldn’t have worked out any better. You get Gaethje vs Tony, it’s the fight that makes sense. It’s two of the top guys in the world. Khabib is out so the winner will face Khabib.”

So where does that leave McGregor and his season? The former featherweight and lightweight champion is now the odd man out in the 155lbs division, sent to the back of the line for title contention after he cut in front of Gaethje.

“This impacts everybody,” White added. “There’s three fights [cards] that have already been postponed that we’re gonna work out over next several works. I don’t know where this puts anybody. Conor really wants this rematch with Khabib. Khabib, Tony and Gaethje probably won’t fight again until September. Nobody saw this coming. It’s one of those things you can’t predict. We’re rolling with it. Gonna get it figured out.”

This was supposed to be the year McGregor reasserted himself as the UFC’s No 1 draw, after 14 months of inactivity following his October 2018 submission defeat by Khabib.

Now there’s a possibility he may not even fight again this year.

If his call-outs of Masvidal and welterweight champion Usman were for real, we won’t see that until after “Gamebred” and “The Nigerian Nightmare” have thrown down for the title.

But if the lightweight title is McGregor’s true goal, he is possibly looking at 2021 before he gets back in the Octagon.

White will be conscious of wasting a McGregor fight on an empty arena, too – he pulled in a US$10 million-plus gate for the fourth time in his career against Cerrone, selling out the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas in minutes, and bringing in over a million pay-per-view buys.

As White noted, Las Vegas is “completely shut down” and the Covid-19 crisis shows no signs of abating in the US. That has seen the UFC relocate to a secret venue – reportedly the Tachi Palace Resort Casino in Northern California, according to MMA industry veteran Jeff Sherwood. The venue is on native American land that is not overseen by the state’s athletic commission, and White says he is “setting up shop” there for two months, but who knows how much longer he will need to stay.

McGregor would not even be able to fight there, either – he’d have to be flown in to White’s secret private island where he is planning on hosting cards for internationally-based fighters who can’t get into the US.

Would you really want the industry’s biggest draw competing in such a hokey gimmick? Surely you wait until fans are allowed to attend on a mass scale, and that possibly puts us into September, perhaps, and that is when Khabib will face the new interim lightweight champion.

It’s a shame for McGregor, whose focus looked renewed – maybe even better than during his rise to superstardom – in that 40-second destruction of Cerrone.

All is not lost, though – the Nate Diaz trilogy is still on the table, which is no bad thing from either a financial or fight quality perspective.

You could also throw him against former interim champion Dustin Poirier, with the promise of a future title shot on the line.

All that’s certain is White and the UFC will look to get the most out of their cash cow, whomever he fights next, and that could mean waiting a while.