Donald Cerrone was initially expecting to fight Conor McGregor in the 155-pound lightweight division. But then, McGregor suggested they both forgo the weight cut and fight in the 170-pound welterweight division.
Cerrone was all for it, and actually offers McGregor his thanks for the suggestion.
“He just took the edge off,” Cerrone said in his documentary series More than a Cowboy (via MMA Junkie). “A lot of cutting that weight… making it to fight week is just battling the weight cut, but now we get to go in there and have fun. Oh, man. Thank you!”
“That was Conor’s idea,” Cerrone said. “We were already gearing up, trying to get down towards 155, and he said let’s do it at ’70 and I was like, ‘Done. Okay’. It never mattered to me — weight never mattered to me either.”
Cerrone has competed extensively at welterweight before, but ultimately decided to return to the lightweight division, as he felt undersized against some of the bigger fighters who compete at 170.
Against McGregor, who has fought as light as the 145-pound featherweight division before, that won’t be an issue.
“The only problem me fighting … when I was up at ’70, are those guys are big,” Cerrone said. “Big, big. I’m like 177 right now, 178, and that’s like eating whatever I want. I think he wants to enjoy the holidays with his family and eat and drink, get in there and have fun, so I don’t blame him. Why not?”
Donald Cerrone and Conor McGregor will collide in the main event of UFC 246, which goes down inside the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on January 18.
McGregor has not fought since October of 2018, when he was submitted by Khabib Nurmagomedov in a bid to reclaim the UFC lightweight title. His next most recent fight before that was a blockbuster boxing match with undefeated legend Floyd Mayweather Jr., while his second most recent MMA fight occurred all the way back in 2016, when he knocked out Eddie Alvarez to claim the lightweight belt. Because he still held the UFC featherweight belt at the time, this made him the first fighter in UFC history to hold titles in two weight classes simultaneously. He’s 21-4 in MMA competition.
Cerrone, on the other hand, is coming off a pair of stoppage losses to top lightweight contenders Justin Gaethje and Tony Ferguson. Prior to that, he rattled off back-to-back wins over lightweight contenders Al Iaquinta and Alexander Hernandez, the latter of which marked his return to the lightweight division. Cerrone is 36-13 overall in MMA.
Who do you think will come out on top when Donald Cerrone and Conor McGregor fight at UFC 246?
This article first appeared on BJPENN.com on 1/3/2020.