5 reasons why Kamaru Usman vs. Conor McGregor is a terrible idea

#4. Kamaru Usman vs. Conor McGregor might restart the unwanted trend of “money fights”

Conor McGregor kickstarted the trend of fighters demanding 'money fights', something that made things tricky for the UFC

From the UFC’s perspective, on the face of it, booking a fight between Kamaru Usman and Conor McGregor might make plenty of sense. After all, McGregor is the promotion’s biggest drawing card and so a fight with Usman would undoubtedly pop a huge number on pay-per-view.

However, booking such a fight may well lead to a number of unwanted ramifications for the promotion and its matchmaking team, namely the return of the “money fight” trend, which peaked right after McGregor’s bouts with Nate Diaz and Eddie Alvarez in 2016.

Neither of those fights made all that much sense, but drew huge numbers for the UFC. So when the promotion’s other fighters saw the kind of money that ‘The Notorious’ was making, they decided to attempt to follow suit.

Suddenly, UFC champions such as Tyron Woodley, Michael Bisping and later, Henry Cejudo and Max Holloway, appeared to lose interest in fighting deserving challengers and instead looked to call out either fighters from other weight divisions or aging legends who didn’t deserve a title shot.

While this trend did lead to a handful of entertaining fights, for the most part it was tiresome for the fans. That was particularly the case when the UFC would often refuse their champions, resulting in genuine title fights taking far longer to be set up.

Given that they seemingly want to keep costs, including fighter pay, as low as possible in the post-COVID-19 world, it’s unlikely that the UFC will want this trend returning, even if it sometimes leads to a big-drawing pay-per-view.

Therefore, if they wish to avoid the fighters jumping on the bandwagon, they should not book McGregor vs. Usman.

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#3. The fight itself likely wouldn’t be all that entertaining

Kamaru Usman would likely deploy his wrestling game to smother Conor McGregor

While a fight between Kamaru Usman and Conor McGregor for the UFC welterweight title would undoubtedly receive an epic build, the truth is that if it were to happen, the fight may not be all that entertaining to watch.

While his knockouts of opponents such as Gilbert Burns and Jorge Masvidal have long since buried the idea that Usman is a boring fighter, ‘The Nigerian Nightmare’ would still be highly likely to attempt to impose his wrestling game in a fight with ‘The Notorious’.

Given the Irishman’s struggles against the takedowns of Khabib Nurmagomedov, it’s hard to imagine that he’d be able to stop the takedowns of an even bigger, stronger wrestler in Usman. Therefore, it’d be a surprise not to see McGregor grounded early.

If that were to happen, then the result of the fight would probably not be in doubt. it’d essentially be a question of whether Usman could finish the Irishman off before the final buzzer.

Nobody really likes to see a one-sided fight. On paper, at least, Usman vs. McGregor would be heavily one-sided and certainly wouldn’t be an entertaining fight to watch.

In turn, the UFC is in the business of booking entertaining fights, so therefore, it wouldn’t make sense for them to ink this one.