This must be an interesting week to be one of those casual fans who doesn’t pay much attention to the UFC except for when it really matters.

Think of all the context they’ve missed ahead of Conor McGregor’s return. Think of the inside jokes they don’t get. Think of their confusion when they see no fewer than three fighters on the UFC 229 card all carrying around some version of the lightweight championship belt, even if none of them seem to feel the exact same way about it.

What would you say to those fans in order to help them make sense of what they’re seeing? Remember, the UFC is banking on there being an awful lot of them glued to a TV set Saturday night when McGregor fights Khabib Nurmagomedov.

Every time UFC President Dana White hits a lull in the conversation, he revises his “trending” estimate for pay-per-view buys up another half-million or so. At this rate, he’ll have talked himself into believing that UFC 229 is the best-selling fighting event in history by the time it finally happens. It just remains to be seen whether or not he’s convinced anyone else.

But say White is right. Say there are 3 million thumbs all pressing the “buy” button at approximately the same time on Saturday. That would nearly double the UFC’s previous high-water mark for McGregor’s rematch with Nate Diaz at UFC 202 in 2016. That’s a whole lot of people suddenly deciding to care about this stuff and trying to figure out the lay of the land on the fly.

On the off-chance that you’re one of them, here’s a quick rundown of the current situation:

Technically, Nurmagomedov is the UFC lightweight champion. But he did beat a literal real estate agent to claim the vacant title, which might explain why it’s easy for even hardcore fans to forget he’s the champ the instant his hardware is out of sight. McGregor? He’s the former champ, though he never actually lost the belt in a fight. Instead, the UFC took it from him via administrative TKO when he was too slow in returning to the cage. But since he’s also the biggest star in the history of the sport, he doesn’t really need a title to get people to care about his fights. Just in case, however, he’s got two of them that he’s been carrying around all week – lightweight and featherweight – and they seem to materialize out of thin air the moment you try to snap his picture. Then there’s Tony Ferguson. Oh, Tony. A sad story, really. While McGregor was busy fighting Floyd Mayweather in a boxing match, Ferguson fought for and won the interim lightweight title. Normally that guarantees you the right to fight for the real belt at a UFC event to be named later, but see, poor Tony tripped on a cord and hurt his knee, and after that the UFC decided that his belt didn’t exist anymore. He’s still got it, though. Want to see it? Too bad, because he’s going to show it to you anyway.

But the important thing here, the one thing you really need to know, is that none of it matters. Belts schmelts. They’re just props. The idea with this event is to get a little clarity, or at least to sell the illusion of it, and if the shiny gold strap helps you keep track of who is who, fine, go nuts.

The problem, as the UFC has discovered, is that you don’t slap a belt on someone and create a star. If it was really about those accessories, then it would have been McGregor’s lightweight title fight with Eddie Alvarez at UFC 205 that set the all-time UFC pay-per-view record. Instead, it was his second fight with Diaz, which was a fight about nothing more than bragging rights. Given their history, that narrative was enough.

Now McGregor is back with a new story to sell. It’s about figuring out who the best lightweight is, sure, but there’s other stuff too. A rivalry between nations and cultures, for one thing. A couple warring gangs from different gyms. A small bus also makes an appearance.

Mostly, it’s a fight about finding out. Which man’s vision of the near future is accurate? Whose very confident prediction will be proven right? And, just as importantly, what will be left when the dust clears and the pay-per-view buys have been all tallied up?

You can create a new belt whenever you feel like it. Making it mean anything, that’s the hard part.

For more on UFC 229, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.