Henry Cejudo wants the UFC to let Conor McGregor walk. MMA Fighting relayed it on X on Nov. 6: the former two-division champion suggested the promotion cut McGregor from the roster and let him become a free agent. Within hours, Heavy and Boxing News were running their own versions of the headline. It’s a blunt idea, and it’s the correct one.
I’ll be upfront about what we don’t know. The reports going around don’t lay out the terms of McGregor’s deal, and they don’t spell out every piece of Cejudo’s reasoning either. What we do have is a full week of McGregor news. Every single item in it cast him as a spectator, a mentor or a man arguing with a video edit. None of it cast him as a fighter.
The Week in Rome
Start with the show in Rome. Raul Rosas Jr. took a fight with Colby Covington on short notice and submitted him in 40 seconds, according to Championship Rounds. Forty seconds. That’s barely enough time to find your seat. The camera found McGregor, and Spinnin Backfist posted a clip claiming he was “dying laughing” after the tap.
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McGregor fired back on X within a few hours. He called the clip “false and fully edited,” said he really had been laughing at some point in the night, and insisted the footage had been stitched in to make it look like a reaction to Covington losing. Then came the line that actually mattered: “I do not laugh at competing men and women. I respect them! Win lose draw!” He finished by congratulating everyone who competed.
Fair enough. I believe him, and the instinct is a good one. Still, look at where all that energy went. The most famous fighter the UFC has ever had spent his night cleaning up a viral clip about his own face in the crowd.
The same evening, Happy Punch posted footage of McGregor watching a fighter go down with an ugly leg injury in the first round. Its caption read, “That’s the face of a man who’s reliving an experience.” I’m not going to read anyone’s mind from a cageside shot. But that clip traveled because people looked at it and saw a guy in the stands looking back at his career.
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The Mentor Version
The best McGregor story of the week came secondhand, and it was lovely. Speaking to Ariel Helwani, Jean-Paul Lebosnoyani remembered training with McGregor when he was 17. He’d just finished the biggest meal of his life when his dad called to tell him McGregor was at the gym and needed him right then. Lebosnoyani said they did jiu-jitsu rounds for about two weeks before McGregor met Dillon Danis. He said McGregor messaged him throughout his career and congratulated him when he signed with the UFC. He also described McGregor arriving at the gym in two Rolls-Royces and dropping the whole persona the second he stepped on the mat. McGregor reposted it with “True martial artist is Jean Paul!”
I love that story. I love a kid who’s about to throw up on a superstar and does the rounds anyway. And it’s exactly why Cejudo’s idea holds up. All the warm stuff in it, the mentoring, the messages, the gym loyalty, survives a release just fine. None of it needs a UFC contract.
Why Free Agency Fixes This
Right now the arrangement helps nobody. A roster spot means something. It tells fans a fight is somewhere on the horizon, so every McGregor appearance turns into a referendum on whether he’s coming back. Every cageside shot gets slowed down and studied. Every grin gets a caption. That’s how you end up with a 40-second submission where half the conversation is about the guy in the crowd instead of the 40 seconds.
Cut him loose and the question answers itself. If McGregor wants to fight, free agency lets him go chase it on his own terms, wherever the money and the matchup make sense. If he doesn’t, he can keep being what he looked like all week: a famous guy who loves the sport, shows up to watch, and texts young fighters when they get signed. Both versions are honest. The limbo isn’t.
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The obvious pushback is leverage. Why would the UFC give away its biggest name for nothing? Because a name tied to an open question isn’t worth much leverage. It produces clip wars and denials posted at 3 a.m. GMT. And if the UFC believes a McGregor fight is coming, it should prove it with a date. Rosas didn’t wait around when his short-notice call came. He took the fight and finished it before most people had their phones out.
Cejudo said cut him. I’d add one thing: do it before the next card where the cameras spend more time on McGregor in his seat than on the people actually fighting. In Rome, the quickest finish of the night lasted 40 seconds, and McGregor watched it from the crowd.
