Conor McGregor is a busy man these days. Fresh off his bender of a week in Liverpool, he’s now back home awaiting the birth of his first child with longtime partner Dee Devlin. Following that he’ll be meeting Dana White in New York City to finalize details on a superfight with Floyd Mayweather.
I wouldn’t expect many official interviews with the man during these periods, but fortunately The MMA Hour had his manager Audie Attar on discuss everything McGregor from Floyd business (trending in the right direction) to future UFC opponents. On that point, Audie threw out a message for Nate Diaz, who split a duo of fights with McGregor in 2016 and currently seems content to wait until a trilogy with the Irishman comes together.
“The Nate Diaz fight interests him. But quite frankly, Nate’s sitting on the sidelines and you have to get Conor excited. If you want to get Conor excited about something you gotta go in there and fight, you know, if you want to fight him in the future. So Nate vs. Tony for the interim title, that creates narrative. So if Nate really thinks he’s worthy of it he A: gets to fight for a title and B: one of those guys has to come out victorious, and both of them want to make Conor excited. They want to fight him.”
“If this thing happens with Floyd, you have to make him excited to get back in there with you, that’s just the reality of it. From an opportunity standpoint, Nate would be foolish not to consider taking Tony on in an interim title fight.”
Nate’s absence has been the focus of much speculation, with UFC president Dana White claiming Nate keeps turning down fights and Nate claiming Dana White is a f**ker making s**t up. The truth lies somewhere in between, where Diaz refuses to fight unless he’s getting paid mad money the UFC isn’t willing to front up.
For a company that makes the vast bulk of its money off a few select stars, the UFC seems to have a very hard time paying its fighters like stars. If he isn’t already a star, Nate is right on the cusp. But we may never know because the promotion seems unwilling to pay him what he’s asking even after he’s fought in the two biggest fights in UFC history.
