Kevin Lee considers Ferguson bout a legitimate title fight, but doesn’t care about the belt

Given that UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor has been busy preparing for his Saturday night boxing match with Floyd Mayweather, the UFC has paired Kevin Lee and Tony Ferguson together in an interim lightweight title fight. In the opinion of Lee, this interim title battle should be considered a legitimate lightweight championship fight.

He broke it down on the latest edition of The MMA Hour.

“I think as far as the hardcore fans and everybody [are concerned], this is the real lightweight championship,” Lee said . “McGregor’s got one fight at lightweight, Tony’s got 10 or 11, I’ve got nine or 10. This is for the real lightweight championship because we have the most fights and we’ve already been through all these top contenders.”

“You even look at somebody like Conor, he’s only beaten one guy at 155. Khabib [Nurmagomedov] hasn’t beaten anybody in the top 10. So this is for the real lightweight championship and I think that’s what the folks want to see and they want to see it move on, they want to see new blood, and they want to see the new generation. The UFC, they already on that wave, they know I’m the new generation around here. And I’m going to put Tony down and show the rest of them too.”

While Lee considers his scrap with Ferguson to be for the real lightweight title, however, he doesn’t really care about the belt.

“I’ve said it before, I don’t really give a damn about the belt, I feel like a champion anyway,” Lee said. “So [this fight with Ferguson] makes it a little more fun for me because the man disrespected me and I can’t take disrespect without retaliation. Me and him both know when he walked up on me at International Fight Week, that we was going to get it in.”

Do you consider Kevin Lee’s fight with Tony Ferguson to be an interim lightweight title fight, or does Conor McGregor need to be a part of the equation?

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 8/27/2017.