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If he beats Khabib that is a very odd situation. He was stripped of the LW belt but never lost it in the cage. The linear belt does belong to him.
Let’s trace the history of the LW belt back to Sherk. Im just going by memory here but I think the UFC folded the division and then brought it back so that linear belt went to Sherk first, I think. Then he defended against Hermes Franca, they both tested positive for steroids after and Sherk was stripped of the belt.
Penn fought Joe Stevenson for the vacant strap and made him cry blood, then Penn drank his blood and fought Sherk.
He unified his title with the linear belt at that point. It counted as a defense but it was also a kind of unification in a lot of people’s minds.
So Penn beat Sherk and I think right after he went up and lost to GSP when he tried to win the WW belt, then defended his LW belt against Kenflo and Diego Sanchez.
(Penn has a very large part in the complicated story of the linear WW belt as well.)
Then he lost his LW belt to Edgar. Edgar defended it against Penn and then against Maynard but lost it to Benson Henderson. Bendo lost his belt to Anthony Pettis, and Pettis lost it to RDA, then RDA lost it to Eddie and Eddie lost it to Conor. That belt was the same belt that Sherk held at the start of the new UFC LW division. That belt went on a hell of a journey.
Conor then leaves and gets stripped for inactivity. Still holds the linear belt (kind of like Sherk) but no longer is the official champion.
The rule of a linear title, as per the recognition/popularization of the concept by Ring Magazine is “it belongs to a man until he loses it”. So in a way Rocky Marcinao was the last linear champion of his “belt line” - after him, there is a different and a new leniar champion. That champions belt has its own run and story.
Anyway, back to the Sherk line at LW.
Ferguson wins an interm belt since Conor is gone. That fight is, what would otherwise have been, a #1 contender fight between two of the top 4 fighters at LW. That interm belt goes poof when he can’t show up to fight Khabib. The UFC farts and creates a new fake LW belt out of thin air and gives that to the winner of Khabib and some guy from the bottom half of the top 10.
Khabib holds perhaps the most worthless belt in UFC history at the moment. Worth even less than the interm belt that came before it. He is quite possibly the least legitimate champion in UFC history.
So maybe Conor won’t be “defending” a belt but Khabib will certainly be winning a very important unification if he wins.
The important word out of all that was “concept”. He has never defended, this is not a title defense by some made up concept.
Will he ever defend if he wins a belt again, I don’t know!
Any claims though that he has defended a title thus far, real or imaginary is false