Urijah Faber Talks ‘Big Fight’ With McGregor, Reveals Mendes Injury
Former WEC featherweight champion Urijah Faber has experienced better than most the enormity of Conor McGregor’s character. Having just finished filming for the latest season of The Ultimate Fighter (TUF 22), ‘The California Kid’ is fresh off a six-week stint of time spent with ‘The Notorious’, in what was quite the surprise announcement to begin with. Not because it wouldn’t make good TV, but more in regards to the lack of actual rivalry or the traditional coaches fight at the end of the season.
Nonetheless, we’ve already heard some great stories of unseen scuffles and confrontations between the opposing teams and coaches. Faber is currently booked to face Frankie Saenz at UFC 194, the very event headlined by McGregor’s attempt at title unification with his bitter rival and long-time ruling boss Jose Aldo. With all the drama that comes with coaching on The Ultimate Fighter, you’d expect at least a few snipes from Faber towards his Irish counterpart, although you could see the heat between them as more of a friendly banter in all honesty.
‘The California Kid’ spoke to Bruce Buffer on his podcast ‘It’s time’ this week, and describes how he’d definitely want to fight McGregor in the future:
“We get along OK, there’s a lot of banter back and forth between the two of us. I’m hoping there’s a fight. I wouldn’t say that we’re best of friends but I think he’s OK. I think I probably will, it’s just my gut, I can definitely say that after the show I hope the fight will happen. It’s not because I dislike Conor, he’s got a mouth and he can talk it up, but I’m about having the big fights that matter and that’s a big fight,”
McGregor, as he often points out, is hot property in the UFC right now. A fight with Faber wouldn’t exactly have the deepest back story, but their names alone would be enough to bring in a more than healthy PPV (pay-per-view) tally. ‘The California Kid’ then discusses his Team Alpha Male training partner Chad Mendes, and more specifically the UFC 189 main event:
“Chad’s gonna beat the crap out of Conor when they fight again, I made that very apparent to (McGregor) on the show. He’s been talking a lot of crap, he’s a bit delusional. He thought he was winning the whole fight against Chad, but Chad will get his shot again and will be victorious. In my opinion, Chad has a terrible style for McGregor, and Conor did look pretty bad even trying to get up off the ground. Chad breaks his foot five days in to the camp, then he breaks his thumb a minute in to the fight, then he fatigues but he still beat the crap out of Conor,”
“You can’t take it away from Conor, Chad is a dangerous fight, but it would have been a whole different fight. Both guys said they had injuries going on, hopefully they’ll get it on again.”
Many have weighed in with opinions about what would’ve happened if Mendes had the full eight-week camp in the lead up to his interim title fight, but as things stand he was vanquished by McGregor. It’s likely the Irishman will be a lightweight by the next time Mendes fights in a featherweight championship bout, so we may never know.
It hadn’t been disclosed that ‘Money’ had broken his foot in the two week camp for the McGregor fight, but as said we may never find out how a full camp rematch would go.
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