Conor McGregor
It’s been more than three months since Conor McGregor last fought,
and almost 13 months since he last set foot inside the Octagon.UFC president Dana White admitted Tuesday in a small gathering with
reporters that he’s not sure when – or, significantly, if – the
lightweight champion will fight again.
White said he knew nothing about reports in Ireland that McGregor
was involved in a brawl in a pub in Dublin on Sunday. One of the men
McGregor is alleged to have punched is a man with ties to the leader of a
drug cartel in Ireland.
McGregor couldn’t be reached for comment and his manager, Audie
Attar, failed to respond to messages. White said he hasn’t spoken with
McGregor, but was betting the reports are erroneous.
“No, [I don’t know anything about it], but I don’t think it’s true,” White said. “Conor
can walk down the street and it’s big news now. If this is true, I just
have to believe it would be off-the-charts crazy.”
White said he was trying to put together a fight involving McGregor
for UFC 219, which will be held at T-Mobile Arena on Dec. 30. Because
of his actions earlier this month at a Bellator event – in which
McGregor jumped into the cage during a fight, shoved the referee and
slapped a Bellator employee – White said McGregor now won’t fight on
that show as punishment.
Attar had previously denied McGregor was going to fight on the Dec.
30 show, saying his attention had always been focused on returning to
the cage in the first quarter of 2018.
White admitted that he’s not so sure whether McGregor, who
reportedly earned in excess of $100 million to fight Floyd Mayweather in
a boxing match on Aug. 26, will ever compete again.
“Listen, Conor might never fight again,” White said as he was discussing the McGregor-Bellator incident.
“He made $100 [expletive] million. I’ve got guys who made less than
that who are lawyers and went to school their whole lives and quit
working. When you go to school your whole life to be a lawyer, and
you’re a good lawyer, and you make a few bucks and you’re done? The
guy’s sitting home every day watching cartoons or whatever he’s doing. I
don’t know.
“[Ex-UFC matchmaker] Joe Silva doesn’t work any more. These
guys make money and that’s it. Fighting is the worst. Fighting is the
worst. Try to get up and get punched in the face every day when you have
$100 million in the bank. Money changes everything with a lot of
people.”
White stressed that he likes McGregor and said the UFC is
negotiating a new contract with him. McGregor has frequently said he
wants equity in the company in his next contract, so White was asked
about that.
While he said McGregor deserves to be richly paid, he stopped short
of saying he deserved to be given a share of the company. He invoked
NBA legend Michael Jordan’s name in his simple response.
“Did Jordan get points?” White asked, chuckling. He said, though, that “Conor can’t be paid enough money. He’s worth every penny and more.”
White said he had been speaking with McGregor’s representatives
about a new deal. But he said he’s not trying to force McGregor to fight
if he doesn’t want to any longer.
The fight business is different than others, White said, and it’s
useless trying to urge someone to fight whose heart isn’t in it.
“Everybody always says to me, ‘You have to want this guy to fight. You’ve got to want this guy to fight,’ ” White said. “I
don’t want anybody to fight unless they want to fight. This isn’t a
business where you can just make people fight. You either want it or you
don’t. That was my big thing with [Georges St-Pierre]. He wasn’t acting
like a guy who really wants it. At the end of the day, I’m going to run
this business with or without anybody.
“If Conor wants to fight again, absolutely we want Conor to
come fight. But if Conor walks away and doesn’t ever want to fight
again, it’s part of the game.”
White said McGregor needs to defend his lightweight title. He won
it on Nov. 4, 2016, but hasn’t fought in MMA since. He also won the UFC
featherweight title in 2015 but never defended that.
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