Again, another useless fight, id like to see Conor face a wrestle heavy opponent to justify the rematch, beating strikers builds 0 interest ina rematch. I want to see if he can stop a double, I want to see good scrambles, and so on.
Give him Islam and FKL, that way I could actually get hyped for a rematch.
Islam isn’t high profile enough to make sense. Your thought process is exactly why some people were hoping for the usman, Colby or even something like Kevin lee matchups.
Here’s my take: Conor has shown he can beat guys who can wrestle. I mean heck, he did beat Chad freaking Mendes after all. That being said, there’s the “short notice” argument for that fight, and he otherwise has never really faced guys who are top wrestlers.
Watching the conor fight back after all the hype died down and looking at it strictly from a non-bid perspective, Conor did a good job in the khabib fight. He took some shots and he survived relatively well at times on the ground, but he didn’t have the skills to win. That being said, it’s KHABIB. No one has. And if khabib makes tony look like Any other guy he’s fought, the argument that khabib is on another level grows exponentially.
At that point you have to take a step back and figure out who gave khabib his best challenge. IF CONORS PERFORMANCE WAS BETTER THEN TONYS, (big if) and Conor put away someone like a poirer, the fights on. You can just see the pre fight video now “Khabib fought Poirer and in a grueling (bullshit) 3 round fight khabib was really tested, Conor returns to the sport and knocks him out in 2 minutes”. Boom there’s your marketing campaign. DONE. so it certainly could happen, but all these things considered, if tony over performs and makes this the fight we all want it to be, everyone on the planet earth will want a rematch. and if anything khabib and his camp are saying about his world-wide reach is true they could very well stick with it, and continue to push Conor in WW for something like a masvidal fight.
Sorry this is so long
My other point I wanted to make is that mendes was off the couch at 145. There’s a big difference between that, and a full camp, 170 usman or Covington. If you struggled with khabib at 155, the only way you win those fights is if your power is actually THAT crazy, and the Cerrone fight was totally legit, and he can recreate that kind of insane aggression against guys like usman and Colby. But I don’t see it happening