It certainly won't match UFC 194 levels of interest, but Joseph Duffy takes to the Octagon (a little earlier than many would have liked) on Saturday night as UFC 195 rolls into Las Vegas. The bout against Dustin Poirier, much like it was for Conor McGregor, could well be a sink or swim moment for the Donegal man.
At this level, every fight has the chance to knock you off course and Duffy is taking a necessary step up in terms of quality to face Poirier. The path that has been set out for Duffy, rightly or wrongly, is a rematch against McGregor and a win over the American is crucial if he wants that to happen.
His progress through the UFC hasn't been as meteoric as the Dubliner's but then it doesn't need to be. He was asked about that situation by Ariel Helwani in the build up to Saturday night's fight and, as he tends to be, Duffy was completely up front and relaxed about the fact that there's not going to be the same kind of Irish support in the MGM Grand for him as there was for McGregor less than a month ago.
Conor's the one who's brought the spotlight to Irish MMA. He's very outspoken, he's got that personality that a lot of people are drawn to and that brought attention to MMA in Ireland.
And obviously Christmas. People are going to struggle to make Conor's fight, Christmas and then come back out for New Year but I've had a lot of people message me that they're coming across so I'm really grateful for everyone who's travelled and everyone who's going to tune in.
And when the discussion did move on to the featherweight champ, there was only going to be one question that Helwani was going to ask. With McGregor moving back up to lightweight, is a rematch on the cards?
I feel like at the end of the year people are going to be talking a lot more about that fight.
I don't think (the fight will happen in) 2016. I think 2017.
With talk of Croke Park already doing the rounds we'll just start buying next year's calendars already and go about marking off random dates that it could happen.
You can watch the throughly engaging interview with Duffy here courtesy of MMA Fighting.
