Not even needless interim title ruins great Ferguson-Nurmagomedov match

If you asked mixed martial arts fans which fight they would want to see most, it’s a good bet that Khabib Nurmagomedov vs. Tony Ferguson in a five-round lightweight match would be high on that list.

And so it should be good news that the fight is done and will serve as the co-main event of UFC 209 on March 4 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. A rematch for the welterweight title between Tyron Woodley and Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson will headline the show. That show also includes what should be a bombs away heavyweight fight between Mark Hunt and Alistair Overeem.

But the UFC placed the interim-title designation on the Nurmagomedov-Ferguson bout, which has irritated some fans. It’s a move the UFC is making more and more often, and not always to great acclaim.

When Dana White and Lorenzo Fertitta purchased the UFC from Semaphore Entertainment Group in 2001 for $2 million in what would turn out to be the Heist of the Century, one of the things they did was to compare their new fight promotion to boxing. Both White and Fertitta were long-time, hardcore boxing fans.

They vowed they would keep the things that made boxing great and get rid of those that weren’t so good. One of the best moves they made was to protect the sanctity of their belts. They didn’t want to needlessly strip champions of their titles, nor did they want their champions defending against less-than-worthy contenders.

They want the system to be a meritocracy and have fighters earn their way to title shots. And champions were going to be forced to defend against the top available contenders regularly.

That worked spectacularly well for most of the time since they made that purchase 16 years ago, and it’s a big part of the reason why the UFC became so popular.

But in the last year or so, the UFC has been creating interim titles at a frighteningly high pace.

Conor McGregor is at the middle of much of this. He became the interim featherweight champion at UFC 189 in 2015 when he stopped Chad Mendes. He then won the full championship at UFC 194 when he knocked out Jose Aldo.

McGregor never fought at featherweight in 2016. He was supposed to fight lightweight champion Rafael dos Anjos at UFC 196 last March, but dos Anjos was injured shortly before the fight and pulled out. He was replaced by Nate Diaz, but they fought at welterweight because Diaz hadn’t been training. And when Diaz submitted McGregor, it led to a rematch under the same conditions at UFC 202.

After McGregor won that match, he could have defended the belt at UFC 205 in New York against Aldo, who had defeated Frankie Edgar at UFC 200 in July to become the No. 1 contender. But McGregor again opted to fight a lightweight champion and captured that belt when he knocked out Eddie Alvarez.

That, though, created a problem. McGregor announced after winning the lightweight belt that his girlfriend, Dee Devlin, was pregnant and that he wouldn’t fight again until after the baby was born. White said he has no plans for McGregor to fight for 10 months.

Thus, two more interim belts were born. White forced McGregor to choose which belt he would keep, and said McGregor chose to keep the lightweight one and surrender the featherweight belt (though McGregor disputes this). The UFC named Aldo the regular featherweight champion, which should have been it. But because it needed a headliner for UFC 206 in Toronto last month after light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier pulled out with an injury, it sanctioned the Max Holloway-Anthony Pettis bout as an interim featherweight title match.

So now, we have Aldo as featherweight champion, Holloway as interim featherweight champion, McGregor as lightweight champion and claiming to still be featherweight champ, and the Nurmagomedov-Ferguson winner as the interim lightweight champ. And if you look at the fighters’ list on UFC.com, you’ll see that they still have Jon Jones listed as interim light heavyweight champion. That’s probably a mistake because Jones was suspended for a year after failing a drug test in July and was unable to fight Cormier, but it just shows how common the interim belts have become.

All that said, it hardly detracts from the quality of a fight. It does cloud the historic record, and long from now it will be difficult to accurately compare fighters because of all the interim belts being given out.

But as it stands, it’s not really that big of an issue. No one on the planet will regard either Nurmagomedov or Ferguson as anything other than the No. 1 contender for the lightweight title after their bout at UFC 209. It will just be a boon to the winner financially, because the winner will have a belt and thus will be able to get pay-per-view points when he ultimately faces McGregor for the real belt.

A fighter making more money, not less, is always a good thing.

Because McGregor is such a big money generator, the UFC gives him great leeway in picking his bouts. And it’s not inconceivable — unlikely, yes, but not impossible — that he fights for the welterweight title when he gets back, and doesn’t defend the lightweight belt. That would create all that more juggling.

It takes away from the historic record, but it also creates major events. A McGregor fight is always a big event in and of itself, but when he’s trying to do something historic, it adds significance to it, and the UFC has stacked those cards heavily to make them special.

It’s a good bet that had Ronda Rousey defeated Amanda Nunes at UFC 207 for the women’s bantamweight title, she would have next fought the winner of the Holly Holm-Germaine de Randamie match that is set for UFC 208 in Brooklyn on Feb. 11 for the newly created featherweight belt.

That fight would have been one of those “special” events, too, and would have been a major card. It also would have created another interim belt, most likely.

It’s best not to have the interim belts unless absolutely necessary. When does it become necessary? If the champion is injured and is going to be out for, say, more than a year. At that point, it’s not fair to the rest of the field that no one gets a title shot. In that case, the interim belts are OK.

But having to see White strap an interim belt around someone’s waist is a small price to pay to see Nurmagomedov and Ferguson go at it for five rounds.

Ignore the interim titles. Enjoy the fights.

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