UFC has decided they’re going the show Conor McGregor who’s the boss in their relationship. It’s been a turbulent few days that saw McGregor declare his retirement and the UFC pull him from his UFC 200 fight against Nate Diaz, all over demands from the promotion that McGregor leave his training in Iceland for a series of press conferences in North America.
Fortunately, things seem to have cooled down between the two parties, and Conor released a statement this morning taking the retirement talk back and offering to show up for a single press conference in New York. For those hoping the McGregor vs Diaz fight could be saved, it sounded like a pretty simple way to work things out. But it wasn’t enough for UFC.
TMZ is reporting that UFC has turned down McGregor and he won’t be fighting on the UFC 200 card.
Not only did UFC offer to fly Conor to every destination on a top-of-the-line private jet … but also offered to ship out every single piece of his gym equipment from Iceland to Vegas for this weekend’s media event so there wouldn’t be a kink in Conor’s training.
We’re told McGregor was told his gym would be set up identically to his Iceland training center and it would all be ready to go the second he stepped off the plane.
Not a bad offer from UFC … I wonder if Conor’s training partners were welcome on that private jet as well, because it’s not the gym equipment that’s the important part when training. This source is obviously UFC friendly and feeding details that make McGregor seem like the unreasonable person in this situation. And while he may be in how he’s handled all this, keep in mind he’s already spent more time promoting fights for the UFC over the past year than anyone not named Ronda Rousey.
As Conor said in the statement he released earlier today…
I’m doing what I need for me now. It is time to be selfish with my training again. It is the only way. I feel the $400million I have generated for the company in my last three events, all inside eight months, is enough to get me this slight leeway. I am still ready to go for UFC 200. I will offer, like I already did, to fly to New York for the big press conference that was scheduled, and then I will go back into training. With no distractions. If this is not enough or they feel I have not deserved to sit this promotion run out this one time, well then I don’t know what to say.
With the Conor McGregor vs Nate Diaz fight off of UFC 200 for good, neither do we.
(Via TMZ)
