Conor McGregor hasn't competed in UFC since he defeated Eddie Alvarez to capture the UFC Lightweight Championship at UFC 205 in November 2016. While there have been reports that he will soon be stripped of the Lightweight title, he is expected to return to the Octagon at some point in 2018.

Many UFC fighters have been linked with a UFC fight with McGregor, including Tony Ferguson, Khabib Nurmagomedov, boxing legend Floyd Mayweather, and Notorious' longtime rival Nate Diaz.

At one point, many UFC fighters were begging for the promotion to book McGregor vs Diaz 3 and complete the trilogy after the Irishman defeated the American via majority decision at UFC 202 in August 2016 to make the series score between the two 1-1. The fans wanted a decider.

However, since that night, not only has McGregor gone on to win the Lightweight title, but he has also elevated his name outside of UFC in the sport of boxing thanks to his boxing match against Mayweather last summer. Diaz, on the other hand, hasn't stepped foot inside the Octagon since his loss to McGregor.

Speaking recently with The Mac Life, McGregor’s longtime coach, John Kavanagh, has said that a trilogy fight with Diaz was appealing after UFC 202, but the fight has lost its interest to his camp right now as McGregor has continued to elevate himself while Diaz has been sitting on the sidelines.

Kavanagh said: “So definitely for the first six months I thought everybody would have saw the same as me. There’s just a beautiful relationship between Conor and Nate in terms of it’s just a great back and forth with them, outside the cage and inside the cage. It’s a lovely fight. His five round rematch is still one of my favorite fights. That being said, I dd assume that Nate would be as busy or busier than Conor.

“Conor’s had an MMA fight and a boxing fight since and we haven’t seen Nate since. So I started changing and you could see it amongst the fans who are - I’ve always said and I still believe - are the most important factor in all of this because they pay for the Pay-Per-Views, and that’s what they want to see.

"But you can see it was clearly becoming they wanted to see either Khabib or Tony in there rather than [Nate], probably for the same reason that we didn’t: Nate didn’t keep busy. So I don’t think it would be quite right for that to happen before the winner of [Khabib]-Tony, because Conor, [Khabib], and Tony have kept busy and Nate hasn’t.”

As for when Kavanagh believes McGregor and Diaz could fight again, he thinks it could happen at the end of the year, but he says the American needs to keep himself occupied until then for the fight to happen.

“I think Nate should get one in in the meantime. Him vs. Woodley, I hear there are rumors of that or him against a good lightweight, and if the MMA gods smile, it would be a victory for him. Conor fights the winner of [Khabib-Tony] and then you’ve got this amazing superfight for New Year’s Eve.”