yeah he is pretty much guaranteed to look good and have an entertaining fight against Diaz even if he loses

Conor KOing Khabib adds more to his brand, but fight can also go in the direction where he can't shrug him off at all, gets ridden for 5 rounds straight and ends up with a broken orbital bone

while a loss to Diaz, Ferguson, Woodley whoever is a possibility, Khabib is the only one who can make Conor his b*tch

Woodley I am fairly sure would also but McGregor has less to lose as he isn't a welter.

They can promote Khabib enough to get casuals interested. Plus, Khabib is a terrifying Russian talker. He's not going to take Conor's talk. Conor will tell him he'll "dew fookin nuttin'" and Khabib will look coldly back and him and tell him he'll hold him down and punish him (hopefully while slipping in a "number 1 bool****" in there somewhere).

Conor fights Johnny random **** won't sell nearly as well as Conor fighting Khabib because while you still get the same "Conor fan" market, you don't capture the "Conor might lose" market. Khabib brings that.

Obviously Conor/Nate III is the biggest fight, because Nate is a (smaller) star in his own right, but after that Khabib is likely the 2nd highest selling fight they can actually make.

Woodly is a bigger draw than Khabib and with more to gain and less to lose. Same with Diaz. I would like to see Khabib (or Aldo but lol) next myself, and there are some good points about being able to build up a bit of momentum from casuals from the threat he poses, but they can and do hype that every fight whether true or not.

What is the updside to making that fight for anyone but Khabib and the more hardcore fan base?

let's see if khabib beats ferguson first tho

To be clear, absolutely nothing. If you assume Conor has 5+ more fights in his UFC career then delaying a fight with Khabib is a no brainer.

That wasn't the point I was addressing though.

Well I was adding to the general topic with that question at the end of my post, but to address your specific point here:

Why do you believe khabib is a bigger fight than Aldo, woodly, max, ferg or something that would have seemed impossible pre-Conor like Cody?

Think I'm going to meet Conor tomorrow.

Will ask him to batter Khabib next then Ferguson after, may even challenge him to an arm wrestle myself.

Errrbody and they moms know that Conor's next fight is against GSP

Pure Vulcan logic leads me to the conclusion that Conor wins versus Khabib. The logic chain is as follows, Khabib has the record for most takedowns in a single fight, which means he also holds the record for letting his opponent get back up in a single fight. So Khabib clearly is not like Maia in that once you're down he can keep you there. Conor is said to be hard to get down and even harder to keep down according to Welterweight and even Middleweight wrestling partners. And on the feet Khabib got rocked by Michael Johnson so he won't be able to last long against Conor without multiple takedowns.

I think fights with Woodley are out as he's got a date with WB again.

Aldo coming up to 155 doesn't seem like a real possibility at this point. Basically everyone's sort of said "Yeah, Aldo wants to" and then trailed off, seemingly dismissing it. Also, Max

Max is out because he wants Aldo and his career trajectory is harmed by losing to Conor again, even if he's in a different division. Max is still not terribly popular but he's earned a title shot based on his streak. Losing, even at LW, is going to hurt that.

Turd Furguson would be the fight I would make were I Dana, but I've got that lower on the buy-prediction because he's less likely to beat Conor. I'm not buying that PPV, but I'll get some guys together to buy Khabib.

Love the Cody fight on skills but he's a 135er with a 65 in. reach. A decent amount of Conor's 74 in. reach is going to be buried in Cody's skull if that fight happens. It's just not physically realistic.

That's a really round about way of saying that I think Conor only has 3 realistic options for his next fight back right now: Nate ($$$$)>Khabib ($$)>Ferg (maybe $)

If I'm Conor, I do the following:

* Start from the assumption that any fight I do is probably 1M+ buys. Aldo rematch. Khabib or Tony. Diaz triology. Woodley. GSP. There's some difference between them, but literally all of them are doing huge business because of me.

* Therefore, I choose the fight I'm likeliest to win. Take the easy money first, then go after the challenging stuff.

I think it's actually an interesting question of who are the easiest fights for Conor. I don't think it's very clear at all who the easiest fights are.

Toughest to easiest

* Khabib is probably the worst matchup for Conor
* Woodley probably next. The size difference should be overwhelming but I don't think he's a good gameplanner or mentally great.
* Aldo - Really super hard to judge this. Aldo seems like he would give literally anything to hurt Conor in a very personal way. He still looks awesome in every other fight. Think the second fight would be a tough one.
* Diaz. Seems strange to have him below Aldo, given that he actually beat Conor. But it also seems like Conor 'solved' him and he doesn't present as much of an active threat, given that he will never change his style.
* Tony - just don't think he's as high a level as the rest

I have low confidence in a couple of these and probably could be persuaded.

From Conor's perspective I think this is the only way too look at it.

CuCuy seems like the easiest, followed by Aldo.

Diaz is probably in the middle

Woodley, GSP, and Khabib are on the "under no circumstances" list.

Conor vs Cowboy seems like it would be a natural fight to make at some stage but there never seems to be any talk of it.

The logistics are hard to work out on Conor/Cowboy.

Cowboy isn't at 155 anymore and he's looking really nice at 170. Conor could come up, but if he's going to 170 it's to fight for a third belt.

The only way it works even slightly is if Cowboy says "**** it" and cuts to 155, which would be the Cowboy thing to do but kind of a shame from a performance standpoint or to make the fight at a 165 catchweight or something.

Woodley is the ideal fight for Conor. Its a huge fight, the possibility of winning another title will sell and if he loses the narrative is that he just moved up and took a chance.

Cowboy would be a bad matchup, don't think Conor could KO him.

Woodley makes sense from a superfight perspective, especially with his passivity on the feet.

The thing is... Conor didn't get to where he is now by taking the easiest path. He did it by chasing after the biggest dream/fight.

Y'all silly to think that he wouldn't jump on GSP if that was ever available.

GSP would probably be a great fight for him, honestly. Mostly because I'm perma-skeptical of fighters coming back from long layoffs. Who knows how good GSP would actually be - he's almost 36 and hasn't fought in more than three years.

If Conor loses, who cares, he lost to the greatest 170 pound fighter ever who is way way bigger than him. If he wins, he beat the greatest 170 pound fighter ever. It's probably the most no-lose scenario he has to fight GSP.

GSP fight has the potential to do 2 million buys, so "the numbers would be right" for Conor. If GSP does come back, likely he won't be the same and be exposed at some point. Better for Conor to fight him immediately so the narrative is either "wow Conor beat the GOAT" or "oh well, Conor lost to the GOAT" and it doesn't really hurt Conor's image much.

Makes sense.

Gawd Khabib/Ferguson would be so pissed if Conor fought Diaz next. I still don't think Conor wants a piece of Diaz right now, if he loses Diaz will probably defend his belt and who knows when Conor would get another shot at the 155 belt.

I would hate to see Conor fight GSP, but I also haven't seen a very exciting GSP fight either. He had some nice rounds vs Hendricks and I have only seen a handfull of his fights.

So Woodley and Wonderboy have a rematch lined up or is there just talk about one?

Per Ariel it's "close".

Would be especially gross to give Woodley anyone but WB after they fought to a draw. Conor is the wild card, but if he's defending against a WW, it needs to be WB

His next shot at the title will always be immediately following him losing it because he's gonna be totally obsessed.