In 2018, former two-division UFC champ Conor McGregor experienced a decisive, submission loss to UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov. UFC welterweight champion Kamaru Usman is confident he could beat McGregor even more severely.
Usman, like Nurmagomedov, is primarily a grappler. Yet he is quite a bit larger than Nurmagomedov, and probably quite a bit stronger too. So it’s easy to imagine why he feels that way.
“It is a [mismatch],” Usman told MMA Fighting of a fight with McGregor. “More power to him, anything is possible. A fight is a fight, anything can happen. But just being real, that’s a tremendous mismatch. I think I would hurt him really, really bad.
“I mean we saw what Khabib [Nurmagomedov] did to him,” Usman added. “He had to take some time off after the Khabib fight,” Usman said. “Now imagine him fighting me. I don’t think we ever see him back in the sport.”
The reason this fight is being discussed is because McGregor will soon fight Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone in a welterweight matchup. Ahead of this fight, which tops the UFC 246 card on January 18, he’s hinted at interest in a future fight with Usman.
“I liked that welterweight title fight that was on the weekend; I liked the look of that,” McGregor told The Mac Life recently. “I liked the look of Kamaru Usman. I liked the look of Colby [Covington]. I’m open to it all at 170.”
While this comment from McGregor generated quite a bit of buzz, Usman doesn’t believe that matchup makes much sense at this juncture.
“Conor doesn’t even really make sense,” Usman said. “Sure, if he comes in the division and beats someone pretty high up there and really makes the case for himself that he can really handle himself in the division, then absolutely I would entertain that fight.”
How do you think a fight between Kamaru Usman and Conor McGregor would go down?
This article first appeared on BJPENN.com on 1/7/2020.