Dana White continues to shut down Conor McGregor at every turn.
Despite the UFC President turning down the former two-division champion’s request to fight at either UFC 255 or UFC 256, McGregor still agreed to fight Dustin Poirier on Jan 23. It seemed like the fight would take place at 170 as McGregor’s coach, John Kavanagh, stated that the bout would take place at welterweight.
The bout is supposed to be a contender fight for the 155-pound title and both Ali Abdelaziz and Khabib Nurmagomedov has shut down any possibility of a title bout if the match-up doesn’t happen at 155:
“I still feel this but you have to fight at 155,” Nurmagomedov told TSN. “If they fight at 170 or 185, this is not lightweight contender fight. If you want to fight at lightweight contender for the belt you have to fight at lightweight. What is this, like? ‘OK, I’m champion at 155. OK, give me a fight at 170. OK, let’s make weight with Justin Gaethje at 170.’ Same thing. If you want to fight for the title at 155, you have to make 155.”
Dana White appears to share the same sentiment as the current lightweight champion and the UFC President makes it clear that the bout must take place at 155:
“It’s 155 pounds,” White confirmed when speaking to BT Sport. “I’m not putting on a freaking multi-million dollar fight at a catch weight that means nothing. That fight means nothing at 170. Neither one of those two are ranked at 170 pounds and it doesn’t do anything in the [155] pound division if either one of them win cause they’re fighting at 170. It literally makes no sense.
“There are plenty of organizations that put on fights that make no sense. You can go and watch those kinds of fights every weekend. That’s not what we do here.”
Thus far, the rematch between McGregor and Poirier has not been made official as the “Irishman” has yet to sign the contact for the fight, though White believes that its Conor playing games at the moment:
“We’ve offered the fight. We got him his own date,” White said about McGregor’s return. “That wasn’t a date, that date didn’t exist. We worked with ESPN, we got him his own date and we’ve offered them the fight. I know that contracts haven’t been signed yet. Conor likes to play games. Conor plays games and he does his thing. One thing Conor doesn’t do, Conor doesn’t commit to a fight and then not fight. Conor fights.”