McGregor to fight Alvarez at UFC 205
- by Grant Boone
- in Sports
- — Sep 28, 2016
Featherweight champion Conor McGregor with move up to 155 pounds to fight light heavyweight champion Eddie Alvarez at UFC 205 on November 12, UFC President Dana White announced late Monday night on ESPN's SportsCenter.
A lightweight championship bout between Eddie Alvarez and Conor McGregor will headline UFC 205 on November 12 at Madison Square Garden.
The Irishman is now the UFC's featherweight champion having won the title back in December 2015, when he knocked out Jose Aldo in 13 seconds at UFC 194.
McGregor had stated previously that he wanted to defend two belts at the same time when he was making plans to fight former lightweight champ Rafael Dos Anjos at UFC 197. The card will feature two other title fights: welterweight champ Tyron Woodley vs. Stephen Thompson and women's strawweight champ Joanna Jedrzejczyk vs. Karolina Kowalkiewicz. The fact that UFC has confirmed the headline bout six weeks out from the date in "The Big Apple" shows that there were some stumbling blocks along the way.
McGregor will move up a weight division to face Alvarez.
The "Notorious" Irishman is bidding to become only the third two-weight champion in UFC history, following in the footsteps of Randy Couture and BJ Penn.
Johnson (17-10), a veteran of season 12 of The Ultimate Fighter, is coming off back-to-back decision losses to Nate Diaz and Beneil Darius. "It's the reason we all love Conor McGregor".
UFC will hold a press conference at 6 p.m. Tuesday to officially announce the card.
"Instead, Alvarez has been offered a fight against Khabib Nurmagomedov for later this year, but it is unclear whether that fight will come to fruition at this time". White says the goal was to make UFC 205 a big event and he definitely considers this mission accomplished.
Ahead of the second McGregor-Diaz bout last August, White stated that McGregor should head back to the featherweight division to defend his title after the rematch with Diaz.
He lost on his UFC debut to Donald Cerrone - who is also on the 205 card facing Kelvin Gastelum - but went on to beat three top fighters to claim the lightweight crown.