Is Tony Ferguson next for Conor McGregor?
Tony Ferguson recently changed management groups, leaving Paradigm Sports Management — a team that represents former UFC champion and fellow lightweight Conor McGregor — for Ballengee Group. Some have questioned whether being part of the same organization might have hurt the chances of this matchup being made in the past. Now that Ferguson has moved on, is he the next opponent for McGregor?
This was one topic discussed in this week’s Ariel & The Bad Guy episode, streamed exclusively on ESPN+.
Helwani: Chael, I love this topic. In the words of our good friend, good ol’ JR, I feel like business is picking up right now for Tony Ferguson. Let me just preface this by saying Paradigm Sports Management — who represent the likes of Conor McGregor, back in the day Michael Bisping, Wonderboy Thompson, Chris Weidman, Cris Cyborg to just name a few — are one of the best in this sport as far as management goes. As far as representation goes. Top three, top four at the very least.
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I feel like they deserve that credit. But I also feel like they have not been doing the best for Tony Ferguson. That’s because their biggest client — the face of their management team — is Conor McGregor. You have a conflict there. There are times where two fighters represented by the same management are fighting big fights, but it just seems like Tony Ferguson was there, very deserving of a Conor McGregor fight, and was never even in the discussion for the Conor McGregor fight. How could this happen?
I could argue, Chael, that for Tony Ferguson, this needed to happen two or three years ago. The fact that he has finally saw the light — he has left Paradigm and signed with the Ballengee Group, a rising firm in MMA management — is a very smart move. I do feel like it’s time to consider Conor McGregor against Tony Ferguson. Because there is a backstory there. Because Tony can say, “Look, this guy was stopping me from realizing my dream.”
Tony Ferguson has yet to fight for a UFC title as well. He was the interim champ but never fought for the actual title. Why is that? Conor is getting title shots when it’s sometimes not deserved. Why isn’t Tony getting those opportunities? He’s had some bad luck as well. There’s a great story there.
I can tell you right now, Chael, as far as my sources go, that fight isn’t being discussed. But I would like to tell everyone out there [reading] that you should consider that fight. It’s the biggest fight that Tony can get, and also Conor can get if he’s not fighting for the belt next.
Sonnen: When you are talking about a collision course, yes, these two are coming after one another. Don’t forget, Conor was the champion and Tony was the interim champion. These guys are looking one another in the eye. Now, I don’t know if these are totally related. I do think there was likely a conflict of interest, even if unintentionally.
Look, Ariel, the first time I heard Tony was looking to possibly go with other management was a year ago when I spoke to Tony. Here were the cases that he laid out. He said, “I am calling guys out. Before those announcements can get made, Conor then gets booked with those guys.” He said, “I went to social media and I took some trash talk, some barbs at a guy, and three days later Conor copy-and-pasted that and sent it out and everybody heard and Conor got some traction from it.” Ultimately, he said, “I did some trash talk on the phone with management, threw some barbs at a guy, it never went public, 40 minutes later Conor McGregor tweets it out.” That was his big one. He had a private conversation and they fed those lines to Conor. This was his evidence for saying, “We have a conflict here.”
I don’t know if being represented by the same company would actually hurt you. It seems like that could help you with some negotiations unless the company thinks that Conor is more valuable, that Tony is a bad matchup for him, and that is why they would steer him away. That’s the analysis I’m trying to get for you, Ariel. These two are likely the top guys. I know Tony wants that fight, I think Conor probably has his eye on a couple of other things but I don’t know if a change in management is going to get that any closer to fruition.
Helwani: I do feel like this topic, if you want to use it for a selling point, might be too “inside baseball.” But you and I love this sort of thing. We love this kind of drama. We love this kind of backstory. I think if the story is told correctly in that Conor McGregor was stopping Tony Ferguson from realizing his dream, I think this could be a great buildup. [Ferguson] calls [McGregor] “McNuggets” all the time. He takes jabs at him even when he was under the same management roof. Now could you imagine what he’d say if they were separated?
I feel like right now, they have a few options for Conor McGregor. We know that Khabib [Nurmagomedov] is going to return Sept. 7 — that’s what [the UFC] wants. It’s probably going to be against Dustin Poirier. Tony Ferguson could also make the case that he should be next in line for Khabib Nurmagomedov, but there’s a lot going in on this division right now. The key thing is we need to get rid of the logjam at the top.
So you look at those two guys — Conor and Tony. Who is it for Conor if it’s not Khabib? Is he going to fight Al Iaquinta or Donald Cerrone? I don’t see that happening. Is he going to fight Justin Gaethje? I know there was some interest in that but I don’t really see that happening right now. There’s no other big name. Nate Diaz was out there, but now it seems like they are not interested in Nate Diaz anymore. [Ferguson vs. McGregor] is the fight that makes the most sense. And then you have the backstory? It’s a matchmaker’s dream. It’s a promoter’s dream.
Sonnen: Ariel, I hear everything you’re saying. I don’t disagree on any of the points. I just happen to think that Tony deserves a world title fight, and I happen to think that Conor has other things he can do that will be a little less difficult. I don’t see that fight being made immediately.