Big John McCarthy: Tony Ferguson getting cut by UFC is a possibility

Big John McCarthy wouldn’t be surprised if Tony Ferguson was among the UFC cuts following his latest setback.

Ferguson suffered his second defeat in a row after a lopsided unanimous decision defeat to Charles Oliveira in their UFC 256 co-headliner this past weekend.

And given how as many as 60 fighters are expected to be cut by the end of the year — especially the older fighters — there is a possibility that Ferguson, 36, could find himself axed by the Las Vegas-based promotion according to former referee.

“I think they’re going to cut him,” McCarthy said on his Weighing In podcast with Josh Thomson. “I could be wrong about that but the reason I say it is first off, Tony has always had an adversarial relationship with certain people with the UFC. He’s felt like he’s been held back, cheated in certain things. And so you have that. That’s okay, you can say those things when you’re winning.

“But now you take a look at his last two performances — the Justin Gaethje fight, he fought his ass off but he got beat badly. And now this one, he got beat badly. So you look at your lightweights and you go, ‘alright, is Tony Ferguson going to be fighting for the title?’ That ain’t going to happen. You would figure he would have to win somewhere between four or five fights in a row against top talent and that’s probably not going to happen.

“So, he’s not going to fight for the title. So you’re going to keep him for what reasons now? So he can beat your young talent that’s not smart and wise enough to fight with him at this time? That’s not going to do you any good as a promotion. So I don’t know, I just look and say he might be one of the guys in that 60.”

While that would be an extreme decision from the promotion and is seemingly unlikely, it looks like Ferguson will still compete at least one more time in the UFC going by Dana White’s comments in the post-fight presser.

And one would imagine that fight, in particular, would be a make or break for Ferguson’s career as a whole.