Ali Abdelaziz is one of the most powerful men in MMA. Before Henry Cejudo retired, he represented three champions, with Kamaru Usman and Khabib Nurmagamedov also on his books. It’s the latter who gets the most headlines because of his unbeaten record and feud with Conor McGregor.
Abdelaziz likes to talk about McGregor. He also likes to hype up his fighters. Another of his clients, interim lightweight champion Justin Gaethje, will fight Khabib for the championship. However, McGregor showed interest in jumping the queue.
But the Egyptian manager says that ‘The Notorious’ needs to fight someone first. He gave two suggestions for potential opponents. Check them out below.
Payback
Ali Abdelaziz says that McGregor needs to get in line before he gets to fight one of his clients. First of all, he mentioned Tony Ferguson as a potential opponent. That makes sense as a match-up but McGregor probably won’t be interested because it’s insanely risky.
“Right now, he’s on punishment for his bad behavior,” Abdelaziz told TMZ Sports. “Right now, he needs to sit down. Go fight Tony Ferguson, stay busy, stay active. Go fight Jorge Masvidal. Stay active, I want to see activity. Remember, he used to say that to all of us, guess what? Payback is a b*tch.”
Championship Contender
However, Justin Gaethje believes that McGregor will fight the winner of him v Khabib. That fight makes a lot of sense because it would be the champion against the most marketable fighter on the roster. But Gaethje thinks McGregor would prefer to fight him than Khabib. Gaethje told Ariel Helwani:
“I think he’ll fight again, I really do. I think he should wait for the winner between me and Khabib. If I win he should definitely come back. But if Khabib wins, I don’t know and I’m not sure about that.”
McGregor says that he wants to fight Gaethje right now but the UFC shut that prospect down. In short, they want to unify the titles first.
Victory
Gaethje insists that he knows the key to victory. In short, he believes that his distance control would overpower McGregor. However, ‘The Notorious’ is like a sniper as we’ve seen in most of his UFC fights. To sum up, this would be incredibly interesting. Would the Irishman knock him out early or would Gaethje put him through the meat grinder? Gaethje said:
“Distance control is the number one factor in any fight. It’s established in the first 30 seconds. That would be a huge factor in our fight, who could control the distance. The thing about me is I can kick the s**t out of people. So when they are trying to control the distance, I can kick them in the leg and reset that.”
To end this topic, Gaethje also added, “Yeah, I think I would knock him out, to be honest. I think he’s got about 3 rounds and then its hell. And he doesn’t want to go to hell. So I think he’s good for now.”
