Chad Mendes: Conor McGregor owes me a rematch

After losing a short-notice interim featherweight title bout in Las Vegas at UFC 189 to Conor McGregor, Chad Mendes has been relatively quiet considering how dominant he was in the bout before McGregor turned it around in the final moments of the second round. But now Mendes is speaking his mind.

With the loss still eating at him, Mendes says he wants a rematch with the Irishman sooner rather than later. The Team Alpha Male fighter simply believes that things would be very different between he and McGregor if he had a training camp to prepare, as McGregor did at UFC 189.

"I mean, (the lack of a training camp) was 110 percent the factor of the loss in that fight," Mendes, who stepped in at the last minute to face McGregor in place of the injured Jose Aldo, recently told UFC Tonight.

"I know it, he knows it, everybody knows it -- you know, I go out there with a full camp destroy that guy 10 out of 10 times, Obviously going into that fight I'm gonna talk it up. You know 'I'm in great shape, I've been training.' Yeah, I've been training and keeping a decent shape but there was no way you could ever be in a five-round fight shape, you know, in two weeks. Like I said, he knows it, everybody knows it. (With a) full camp, I destroy that guy."

He almost didn't even need it. McGregor scored well on the feet in their July bout, but Mendes dominated nearly every second of the fight with wrestling, ground control and strikes.

Then, McGregor expertly escaped a choke attempt and got to his feet with just a few ticks on the clock in the second round. He made the most of them.

Mendes was clearly exhausted after pressuring McGregor for nearly 10 straight minutes and, more importantly, having effectively no training camp to prepare.

Competition, though, is about who is most ready on any given day to win. In this case, that competitor was Conor McGregor, and so he has to be considered the better man.

Of course, Mendes has another huge fight around the corner, against former lightweight champion Frankie Edgar. "Money" knows that Edgar deserves all of his focus, but at some point he believes that he and McGregor's paths should cross, once again.

"(McGregor) better not try to ditch out of this fight," he said of the "Notorious" trash talker.

"I feel like he owes me a rematch with a full fight camp ... let's see if he's man enough to do that."