{"id":235968,"date":"2017-05-04T10:02:02","date_gmt":"2017-05-04T17:02:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.tcpcharms.com\/bjpenn\/?p=235968"},"modified":"2017-05-04T10:02:02","modified_gmt":"2017-05-04T17:02:02","slug":"michael-johnson-discusses-absences-conor-mcgregor-khabib-nurmagomedov","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.tcpcharms.com\/bjpenn\/mma-news\/exclusive-interviews\/michael-johnson-discusses-absences-conor-mcgregor-khabib-nurmagomedov\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Johnson discusses the absences of Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The lightweight division is one of the most stacked divisions in the UFC. That said, things are a little chaotic in the division at the moment, as champ <a href=\"http:\/\/staging.tcpcharms.com\/bjpenn\/fighter\/conor-mcgregor\/\">Conor McGregor<\/a> is pursuing a boxing match with Floyd Mayweather, top contender Khabib Nurmagomedov has been sidelined with illness and religious obligations, and the fan favorite Nate Diaz has no plans to fight.<\/p>\n<p>On Wednesday&#8217;s edition of <a href=\"http:\/\/staging.tcpcharms.com\/bjpenn\/mma-news\/podcasts\/bjpenn-com-radio-ep-31-john-wayne-parr-elias-theodorou-michael-johnson\/\">BJ Penn Radio<\/a>, dangerous lightweight contender Michael Johnson <a href=\"http:\/\/staging.tcpcharms.com\/bjpenn\/mma-news\/exclusive-interviews\/michael-johnson-says-tony-ferguson-lost-chance-rematch\/\">weighed in on the situation at lightweight<\/a> \u2013 particularly on the absences of McGregor and Nurmagomedov.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\u201cLet Conor be Conor,&#8221; Johnson said of the champ&#8217;s desire for a fight with Mayweather. &#8220;If people want to cry and whine about him then that\u2019s on them. I\u2019m focused on myself and what I need to do to successful and get to the title and start calling my shots like that. So let him be who he is. That\u2019s not my issue.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>While Johnson does not fault McGregor for chasing his massive fight with Mayweather, he also doesn&#8217;t believe the division needs to wait around for its absentee champ.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\u201cTime waits for no man, so I don\u2019t think everybody needs to wait around and wait for Conor to decide <a href=\"http:\/\/staging.tcpcharms.com\/bjpenn\/mma-news\/conor-mcgregor\/coach-john-kavanagh\/\">whether he wants to fight [in the UFC] <\/a>or not,\u201d he said. \u201cIf they need to have an interim title then they need to have one. But as far as everybody getting held up, I\u2019m not getting held up in any position. With my loss to Khabib, I\u2019ve still got to sort of inch my way back up towards the top. Interim titles can be for those guys [at the top]. It\u2019s not the real title anyway.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Johnson then weighed in on the contendership status of Nurmagomedov, who was recently forced to make yet another last-minute withdrawal from a fight with Tony Ferguson.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\u201cYeah of course [he&#8217;s the top contender], he\u2019s undefeated, but at the same time he\u2019s had trouble with his weight,\u201d Johnson \u00a0said. \u201cSo it\u2019s pretty hard to say who the number one contender is. But on the same token, that guy really doesn\u2019t matter, because there\u2019s not a real number one contender in any division, because anybody can get a title shot. We\u2019ve seen that plenty of times.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>What do you think of Michael Johnson&#8217;s take on the situation at lightweight?<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><i>This article first appeared on\u00a0<\/i><a href=\"http:\/\/staging.tcpcharms.com\/bjpenn\/\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>BJPenn.com<\/i><\/span><\/a><i>\u00a0on 5\/4\/2017.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The lightweight division is one of the most stacked divisions in the UFC. That said, things are a little chaotic in the division at the moment, as champ Conor McGregor is pursuing a boxing match with Floyd Mayweather, top contender Khabib Nurmagomedov has been sidelined with illness and religious obligations, and the fan favorite Nate [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54430,"featured_media":130674,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[2674,10516],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v19.7 (Yoast SEO v19.14) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Michael Johnson discusses the absences of Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov | BJPenn.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"UFC lightweight Michael Johnson discusses the complicated landscape of his division, particularly the absences of Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" 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