Conor McGregor’s run as a two-division UFC champ was fun while it lasted. And for those keeping track, it lasted exactly two weeks.

Then UFC commentators announced on Saturday night’s UFC Fight Night 101 broadcast that McGregor has “relinquished” his UFC featherweight title, a choice of words that lacked the full and unmistakable ring of truth.

Forget for the moment that McGregor (21-3 MMA, 9-1 UFC) typically isn’t the relinquishing type. Forget that, if he really had voluntarily decided to vacate one of the two titles he’s so proud of, the announcement might have come from him instead of from Jon Anik.

Instead, focus on the timing. It’s the timing that explains the why behind it all, and it’s the why that drives home the ridiculousness of the UFC’s decision.

If the UFC had decided to take McGregor’s featherweight title away right after he won the lightweight belt, that’d make some degree of sense. If it had waited until it had an opponent ready to face Jose Aldo (26-2 MMA, 8-1 UFC) for his interim title, that’d make even more sense. You can’t keep a belt you don’t plan on defending. Not indefinitely, anyway.

But instead, the first domino to fall here was an injury to UFC light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier (18-1 MMA, 7-1 UFC). That forced Cormier out of his rematch with Anthony Johnson (22-5 MMA, 13-5 UFC), which in turn snatched the one title fight from an already troubled UFC 206 fight card, which in turn sent the UFC into a kind of promotional panic mode.

So what do you do if you don’t have a title fight when you need one? If you’re the UFC, you invent one out of thin air. You also apparently don’t bother yourself with annoying details, like the fact that the whole thing makes zero sense.

It’d be one thing if the UFC had decided to simply wave its magic wand and make McGregor’s featherweight title meaningless while turning Aldo’s interim belt into the real thing. Then at least the internal logic would remain intact.

But that wouldn’t have served the UFC’s short-term, shortsighted goals for next month’s event in Toronto. So it added a third step by grabbing another interim title out of the utility closet and offering it up to the winner of UFC 206’s new main event, a featherweight bout between Max Holloway (16-3 MMA, 12-3 UFC) and Anthony Pettis (19-5 MMA, 6-4 UFC).

So, just to sum up: You have one former champ who never lost the title (McGregor), one current champ whose belt went from interim to genuine while he sat on his couch (Aldo), one deserving contender who’s won nine in a row yet still can’t get a crack at the real belt (Holloway), and another who’s won exactly one fight as a featherweight, yet still has the same chance to grab a new hunk of leather and metal with one successful night’s work (Pettis).

You also have a situation that forces us all to ask, what, exactly, does the UFC think the word “interim” means?

Normally, in this context, it roughly translates to “in the meantime.” As in, “while we wait for the real champ to return from some unavoidable delay, here, fight over this placeholder instead.”

But the UFC has invented a new meaning for the word. In UFC speak, interim can just as easily mean, “for the period of time in which it is promotionally convenient.” In other words, it wants to be able to claim that there’s a title fight on the upcoming pay-per-view, and it doesn’t care how it has to twist words and reality to make it so.

The sad thing is, it’s not going to work. Is there anyone out there who was planning on skipping UFC 206 until they heard the magical words “interim title”? Is there anyone who knows enough about MMA to care about a fight between Holloway and Pettis, yet not enough to know who the real featherweight champ – not to mention who the real featherweight interim champ – really is?

It’s a joke, a sleight of hand that won’t mean anything to anyone who isn’t already equipped to see right through it. It adds nothing to the fight between Holloway and Pettis, which is legitimately interesting all its own. It accomplishes even less as a trick of salesmanship, since it’s so transparent that it can’t help but be dully patronizing.

Worst of all, it forces us to wonder if the UFC really thinks its fans are this dumb. Does it expect them to obsessively follow this sport without ever understanding anything about it? Does it think a shiny gold belt is the perfect trinket to solve any problem?

Or does it just not care if we know when we’re being lied to, since it’s so used to taking our loyalty and our dollars for granted?

For more on UFC 206, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.

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