Featherweight Madness: With UFC 194 Set To Explode, 145 Is The UFC’s New Cash Cow

The UFC may have the week off, but the world’s biggest mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion will be back with a vengeance next week when it explodes onto television screens with an unheard-of three cards in three days from December 10-12.

All of the action is obviously capped off by one of the most hyped fights in UFC history, the featherweight title unification bout between longtime champ Jose Aldo and interim champ Conor McGregor. It’s a high-profile bout that has seemingly been shoved down our throats for the vast majority of 2015, because it has; a whirlwind 10-city World Championship Tour set forth an unprecedented amount of promotion for the first time the fight was scheduled for July’s UFC 189.

Ultimately Aldo infamously pulled out of the bout with a broken rib, starting a landslide of negative news coverage and forcing former title challenger Chad Mendes to step into the fight on barely two weeks’ notice. There, McGregor was taken down early and dominated from top position, but the Irishman weathered the storm to come back and stop a gassed “Money” at the end of the second round.

McGregor won despite some holes being exposed in his game, simultaneously starting a new era for the UFC featherweight division and delivering on the almost impossible goals that his mouth set before him.

Many love the ‘Notorious,’ many more hate him, but one thing cannot be denied: that he’s undoubtedly brought the UFC featherweight division to new heights as the most high-profile weight class in MMA right now. And it needed it. It’s about to explode more if he wins the belt over Aldo, but even if he doesn’t, 145 doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon. Let’s have a look at the reasons why.

3.) Obviously a McGregor win at UFC 194 starts a new and potentially historic era:

As mentioned above, if McGregor can defeat Aldo as many are picking him to do and become the unified featherweight champ, the 145-pound division is going to get even more publicity than it already has been, and that’s saying quite a lot.

The UFC is currently in need of high-profile stars after Ronda Rousey got knocked out, Georges St. Pierre vacated his belt and semi-retired, and Anderson Silva broke his leg and got suspended, and it’s a no-brainer that McGregor fill those shoes. He already has quite admirably, but beating a legend like Aldo will propel his exposure and popularity to possibly never-before-seen heights, making featherweight the division that everyone wants to watch in the UFC.

It might be already, but if McGregor wins, watch out. It could be all featherweight, all the time.

2.) There are some great fights and contenders waiting for both Aldo and McGregor after UFC 194:

Regardless of who wins at UFC 194, both Aldo and McGregor will have some great fights to move onto next. Mendes will square off with Frankie Edgar in the main event of The Ultimate Fighter (TUF_ 22 finale the night before UFC 194, and it’s obvious that the winner of that massive fight should get the next title shot barring any unforeseen controversy between Aldo and McGregor.

Edgar has been flawless since losing to Aldo at UFC 156, and it’d be hard to deny him the title shot many feel he has already earned. With two losses to Aldo and one to McGregor, it’d be harder to make a case for Mendes, but he did take a hard fight on short notice and save one of the biggest cards of the year for the promotion.

Beyond that, the steamrolling Max Holloway is very quietly coming into his own right as a contender, and he’ll face off with dangerous wild card Jeremy Stephens on the main card of UFC 194. That’s a fight that could provide serious fireworks, and the winner would be a great opponent for either the loser of McGregor vs. Aldo or Edgar vs. Mendes, with the winner of that fight possibly getting a title shot.

The 145-pound arena is rife with interesting and exciting possibilities, and that’s a lot more than you can say about many other divisions, which brings us to our last and perhaps most important point.

1.) Above all else, McGregor has made featherweight more fun than it ever has been:

Aldo’s reign as champ cannot be denied as one of the finest ever put together by a MMA fighter. However, it’s hard not to think that he could have become so much more of a star than he is thanks to his immense and generational talent. But “Junior” was content to keep his belt with a series of somewhat uninspiring (and safe) decision wins recently, mixed in with seemingly predictable withdrawals due to injury.

He could have been one of the UFC’s biggest stars, yet he was content to return to his native Brazil without making a single ounce of effort towards self-promotion, something that most certainly cost him millions. He’s also well known for blasting the UFC in the press, and while he may have good points a lot of the time, it’s obviously not the best decision if he wants to become a bigger star.

Aldo doesn’t seem to care, but McGregor is the extreme polar opposite. He knows that he has something special that most prizefighters only dream of obtaining, and he’s been making the most of his opportunity. His trash talk aimed at basically the entire top rung of 145 pounds (and some at other divisions) may be harsh, but overall it’s made these fighters relevant in terms of a big-money bout they might not otherwise ever get.

Edgar and Mendes are great fighters; that much is not and never will be in question. However, no one was clamoring to see their rather vanilla personalities square off in any kind of feud before McGregor came along and started his unique brand of smack talk. It instills an automatic beef that people want to see, and it’s spread over to any legit contender at featherweight. That could never be said about Aldo’s previous fights, so regardless of his talent or your opinion about the ‘Notorious,’ it’s plain to see that featherweight is the most popular division in UFC right now because of McGregor.

And that’s only going to reach new and extravagant heights if he wins in ten days’ time.