It’s official, an immediate rematch between Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz will headline UFC 200 on July 9th in Las Vegas.
Also, while Diaz had indicated that he wanted the fight to take place at lightweight, McGregor has insisted that it goes down at welterweight again, despite many now believing that’s a step too far for the current featherweight champion.
To be fair, McGregor didn’t fair too badly against Diaz in the opening stages of their fight at UFC 196, and had the Stockton native bleeding from cuts to his face, but despite throwing everything but the kitchen sink at him, the impressive KO power he’d shown at 145lbs didn’t appear to have translated up to 170lbs.
That being said, Diaz is known to have an excellent chin, as evidenced by the fact that he has only ever been stopped by strikes once in his entire career, so that’s not necessarily a knock on McGregor’s power.
However, all the energy McGregor expended trying to finish Diaz early in the fight quickly caught up with him in the second as he visibly started to run out of steam, and also appeared to be hurt by Diaz’s punches.
That led to a sloppy takedown attempt from McGregor that allowed Diaz to get on top, take his back and sink in the fight ending choke.
The fact that McGregor asked for this fight again shows he still believes he can get the better of his rival, and given that their last encounter produced a near-record 1.5 million pay-per-view buys, there’s sure to be a lot of people who will want to see whether he’s right or not.
Throw in the fact that this is going down at the historic UFC 200 event, and will be accompanied by a stacked card from top to bottom, and there’s every chance this show could threaten UFC 100’s record breaking 1.6 million pay-per-view buys.
