Conor McGregor has admitted that he’s disappointed he won’t have a chance to fight fellow TUF 22 coach Urijah Faber after their stint on the show together.
According to the interim featherweight champ the original plan was that he would fight Jose Aldo at UFC 189, then go on to coach opposite Chad Mendes on TUF and fight him afterwards.
Of course Aldo’s rib injury changed everything, leading to his interim title fight with Mendes, Faber being drafted instead to coach on TUF and the title fight with Aldo eventually being rescheduled for December.
That meant that he’d be coaching opposite Faber who he already had a rivalry with, but they wouldn’t compete against each other at the end of the season as is traditionally the case on TUF, and McGregor says that fact ended up taking the wind out of his sails.
“They give me Urijah as a coach but they won’t let me fight him,” McGregor says in an interview filmed several weeks ago that’s only just been released now. “My energy was gone from it. I didn’t want to do it. [The show] did not mean anything to me.”
However, McGregor claims that he has since regained his enthusiasm after experiencing the TUF experience first-hand.
“The more I think about it and seeing the fights to get into the house and just being around it, this is the life I have chosen.
“This is the life I have created. To be here and have this opportunity is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Rather than be off with it and feel like I need to get away from it, I am embracing it now.”
Still, McGregor reckons he could easily have fitted the fight with Faber into his busy schedule before fighting for the title.
“Really, it would be nice to have a fight at the end of it. We could easily fit a fight in on the Dublin card in The O2 in October. Filming wraps at the end of September, I believe [Ed Note: It’s already finished]. I could go in and make light work of Urijah. I could maul him inside one round and be fresh.
“Then we could do the Jose fight towards the end of the year on one of these dates that’s being thrown around. They wouldn’t have it so we’ll just be coaches and that will be that.”
