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UFC 236 with be a double interim title fight extravaganza, and neither welterweight champion Tyron Woodley nor Ben Askren can really understand why.

The April 13 pay-per-view event in Atlanta is set to be headlined by an interim lightweight fight between current featherweight champ Max Holloway and actual 155-pound contender Dustin Poirier. And in the co-headliner, Israel Adesanya meets Kelvin Gastelum for the interim middleweight title.

All this while lightweight champ Khabib Nurmagomedov serves a nine-month suspension for his role in the UFC 229 brawl and middleweight champ Robert Whittaker recovers from surgery on a collapsed bowel.

Got all that?

“This is the funny thing to me,” Woodley said Monday during a media lunch in Los Angeles. “The interim belt is the biggest joke on earth.”

But there’s two in one night, though.

“Ooh, a stacked card! A double interim belt,” Woodley joked, before he continued. “I’m not trying to hate, because I’m not trying to get my ass back in the dog house. … But when you think about it, you’ve got a current champion, which out of all champions, Max Holloway may be our favorite champion. If you ask all the champions who their favorite champion is, we might all say Max Holloway. He don’t have to go up to fight for an interim belt. Unless he’s fighting for an actual lightweight belt, it doesn’t make sense.”

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To some, that rings especially true when you consider that Holloway isn’t even facing the No. 1 lightweight contender for interim gold. That distinction belongs to former interim champ Tony Ferguson, who reportedly turned down the fight with Holloway since it wasn’t for the real belt.

Because of this, Askren has one question that he’s already answered.

“Why did they force a title fight at 155? I think that’s kind of what Tyron is saying, too. It’s silly,” Askren said. “Let Max defend his (145-pound) belt. There’s five other things to do that make a lot more sense than that.

“Or maybe everyone is saying no (to fights), I don’t know.”

Not all interim title fights are created equal, though. As far as the 185-pound fight goes, both Woodley and Askren seem to be on board given the pairing and situation surrounding Whittaker’s injury absence.

“When you’re looking at Gastelum (vs.) Adesanya interim belt, in that situation I think it’s warranted,” Woodley said.

Woodley, of course, can relate to the situation, as UFC President Dana White almost opted to create an interim welterweight title before Woodley was booked to defend against Kamaru Usman on Saturday at UFC 235.

“In my situation, there was no need for an interim belt,” Woodley said. “I hadn’t even been out eight months, and I would’ve fought the person maybe the next month. I think when you do an interim just to do an interim, it takes away the juice from having a real belt.”

He continued, “When you just got guys asking to fight for an interim strap … it’s like saying, ‘Well, let me fight for second place.’ It’s just weird to me.”

For more on UFC 235 and UFC 236, visit the UFC Rumors section of the site.