Henry Cejudo says UFC should cut Conor McGregor before his final fight: 'I would cut him'

Cejudo said he believes McGregor was paid $30 million to fight Max Holloway and that the UFC should "let him be a free agent" rather than pay him again.

Henry Cejudo says the UFC should release Conor McGregor rather than pay him for the last fight on his contract, and let him leave as a free agent.

Cejudo, the former two-division UFC champion, said on his Pound 4 Pound podcast with Kamaru Usman that he could "even see the UFC just letting him go based on what he got paid".

"If I'm a businessman and I want to keep a lot of my money, and I like Conor," Cejudo said. "F*ck Conor. I would cut him. I swear to you I would, because if they're going to give him 30 million and not have to give him 30 million particularly with that big-ass Paramount deal that they have and Paramount has to make their money, hey, just cut him. Let him be a free agent. Let him make more money elsewhere, but let him not make money or take money from us."

He said the numbers no longer work for the UFC: "There's no more pay-per-view model, and this dude hasn't won a fight." He went on: "Pretend I'm Dana White, you know what I'm doing? I'm saying he's got one fight left, his last fight wasn't even a fight. He lost again. Just let him leave with the loss in the UFC." Cejudo said he believes McGregor "got paid $30 million in this fight against Holloway".

McGregor returned from five years away to face Max Holloway at UFC 329 in July, and the fight ended after 69 seconds when he suffered a leg injury. He has said the final fight on his UFC contract will not be his retirement and that he plans to move to bare-knuckle fighting after it.

Cejudo also pointed to the risk of McGregor winning that last fight. "Let's say he does fight Justin Gaethje and somehow beats Justin Gaethje?" he said. "Then the ball's on his court. He can go off and fight a bunch of tomato cans and make a whole bunch of money elsewhere."

He accepted that McGregor still makes money for the UFC and its fighters. "He's a cash cow, I get it," Cejudo said. "I get it, and that dude, I'm going to say it, he's made everybody that has a f*cking name. From Khabib Nurmagomedov to Dustin Poirier to Nate Diaz, everybody that fought Conor and that was able to beat Conor, he changed their lives, let's be real."

BKFC's David Feldman has said talks with McGregor will only begin once his UFC career is finished. On the same Pound 4 Pound show, Cejudo and Usman criticised Colby Covington over his grappling loss to Raul Rosas Jr.

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