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Grant Dawson hopes his first UFC main event will lead to even bigger fights and better opportunities, but he’s also realistic about where he fits in the hierarchy of the lightweight division.
Currently on a 12-fight unbeaten streak with eight octagon victories, Dawson jumped at the chance to headline UFC Vegas 80 against Bobby Green. Another win should propel him up the lightweight rankings and get him one step closer to title contention, though there are certain fights he knows won’t be available.
Two of the most notable names on that list are former two-division champion Conor McGregor and Michael Chandler, who were supposed to clash after coaching against each other on the new season of The Ultimate Fighter 31. Despite the uncertainty surrounding the matchup, Dawson doesn’t expect Chandler to move past McGregor and call for fights against other top-ranked lightweights — at least not where he’s concerned.
“There are guys in the lightweight rankings that I don’t even consider being in the lightweight rankings,” Dawson said in an interview with MMA Fighting. “Because there’s no chance of me fighting them. For example, if Conor and Chandler fight each other – which I still don’t think is going to happen – but if does happen, and Conor knocks out Michael Chandler, and they put him [ranked] at No. 5, I don’t consider him No. 5. Because there’s no way they’ll ever put Grant Dawson against Conor McGregor.
“There’s really no point in him being ranked. I don’t think Michael Chandler is in that boat, either. I don’t think Michael Chandler is in the position where he fights somebody that isn’t a huge draw.
“I’m a realist. I get it. I’m not a huge draw. I’m an up and comer. I haven’t proven myself yet. There’s no way Michael Chandler fights a guy like me.”
To be clear, Dawson knows Chandler would never back down from a challenge, especially considering the murderers’ row of talent he’s faced since signing with the UFC. But the 29-year-old American Top Team fighter recognizes that Chandler carries a level of star power that he just hasn’t attained yet to make that matchup interesting enough for the UFC to call for it.
“That’s not to say he’s scared of me or he doesn’t want to fight me or he thinks he can’t beat me,” Dawson said about Chandler. “It just doesn’t make sense for him when he could be fighting huge names and making all this money and bringing in all these eyes as opposed to fighting somebody who’s really, really good, really young and has no name.”
The same goes for McGregor, although Dawson has different reasons for believing that fight would never happen.
With more than two years passed since McGregor’s last fight and no sign that he’s rejoining the UFC’s anti-doping program, which is required before he can compete again, Dawson believes we may have already seen the last of “The Notorious.”
“I don’t think he’s coming back,” Dawson said. “I don’t think he’s fighting. I think he’s going through a mid-life crisis right now. I think he’s hopped up on a bunch of street drugs. We’re going kind of deep here but the thing that makes people happy isn’t chasing happiness, it’s chasing purpose. Conor used to have a purpose, and I believe Conor doesn’t have a purpose anymore, and that’s why his life is kind of going to s***.
“He just doesn’t know what he wants to do. He doesn’t need to do anything. He doesn’t have to do anything. He’s just in this point where he doesn’t know what his purpose in life is and I think that’s he’s so all over the place. ‘Oh, I’m going to box, oh I’m going to do bare-knuckle, oh I’m going to fight Michael Chandler, oh I’m going to do The Ultimate Fighter.’ It’s just bouncing between what he wants to do. I’m retired again, now I’m not retired again. I just think he needs to find some purpose outside of MMA if he really wants to be happy.”
McGregor insists he’s going to return to fight again, and on Thursday, he teased his return by telling fans he’d “submitted my stuff” to UFC anti-doping czar Jeff Novitzky, implying he would return to the promotion’s drug testing pool run by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.
Big picture, Dawson feels like McGregor has already accomplished so much in his career that he doesn’t really need to come back. But he also noted the difficulty of moving on.
“When you’ve dedicated your life to something and now it’s over, and let’s be honest, he achieved everything that he wanted to achieve,” Dawson said. “What else is there?
“When you’ve dedicated your entire life to something, and I think that when family, religion and those things aren’t as important to you, I think once you do succeed or don’t with your goals, that’s when it becomes really hard to adjust to civilian life.”
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