On the newest Josh Nason’s Punch-Out, we dive deep into the big news of the week: the sale of the UFC. And who better to help us wade through the murky waters than one of the captains of the story: FloSports.com managing editor Jeremy Botter!
According to TMZ, UFC is refusing to put Conor McGregor back on the UFC 200 show after his Facebook post today where he made it very clear he still wanted to be on the show and was not retiring.
Given that UFC has not announced a new main event and thus started promoting a new fight, it makes no sense at this point not to put McGregor back on, unless the dispute was something very different than has been portrayed or if McGregor would not do the necessary promotional work such as appear on the promo commercial.
McGregor’s earlier post was a public statement that he wanted to be on the show, but it was posturing for him to not be blamed for any issues that led to the fight falling apart. It is still unknown what the real behind-the-scenes issues are that are keeping the fight from taking place.
But it is also still in everyone’s best economic interest for UFC 200 to be as big as possible, which can only happen if the fight ends up happening.
Dana White denied today that money had anything to do with the situation with Conor McGregor and UFC 200, but also admitted that the McGregor vs. Nate Diaz fight could still be saved and said he believed McGregor would fight for the UFC again within the next year.
White appeared this afternoon on the Colin Cowherd show on FS 1 and said, “It’s not a money issue. That’s false. That’s the problem with the Internet. Never ever was this about money. Conor makes a lot of money and he’s very happy with the money he makes.”
He said McGregor has never come back after agreeing to a deal and looked for more money.
White claimed the entire issue is that McGregor refused to come to Las Vegas this weekend for promotional purposes. White said they were going to shoot the television commercial and have press conferences in three cities, starting in Las Vegas, and then he’d be able to return to Iceland and train for the fight, noting it’s not like they were asking him three weeks before the fight to break camp.
White claimed that in a conversation with McGregor’s manager, he was asked to move this to May and White said that they were spending $10 million promoting the show and the money is in motion.
“It never got combative,” said White. “I was talking to his manager. They were asking, `Let’s move all this to May.’ You can’t move it. This stuff is in motion.”
“I’m not mad, even a little bit,” said White to Cowherd, who said that White didn’t appear to be mad yesterday when they were together. “You were with me yesterday, did I seem mad? It’s UFC 200. It’s a massive fight. Believe me, when Conor went out, ten other people called asking to come in.”
“Obviously Conor made a decision and made a choice to not want to fight on this card. And that’s how he gets paid. That’s on him. The show will go on.”
White said that McGregor does have to clear up the retirement talk, noting that if McGregor says he’s retired, then the UFC 200 fight with Jose Aldo vs. Frankie Edgar would be for the featherweight title and not, as it stands right now, the interim title.
Over a year after officially signing with the UFC, it appears as if CM Punk may finally have a date, location and potential opponent for his first professional MMA fight: July 9th in Las Vegas at UFC 200.
The potential opponent is Mickey Gall, a 1-0 welterweight from New Jersey who is currently ranked at #63 on the list of northeastern United States welterweights on Tapology.com. At 5-11 and 23 years old, he will make his UFC debut at February 6th’s UFC 196 against Michael Jackson, who will be making his professional debut on the show. This clearly looks like a showcase fight for Gall, who has been told that should he win the fight, he’ll get the Punk match at UFC 200 in July.
Dana White appeared on TSN’s Off the Record with Michael Landsberg and confirmed all of this. He also confirmed that Ronda Rousey will not be fighting at UFC 200 but did speculate on who he’d like to see on the card. Landsberg brought up the possibility of GSP-Lawler and White said that would be awesome and also speculated that Anderson Silva could be a possible opponent for GSP, should he return.
The Gall-Jackson fight will be on the Fight Pass prelims of UFC 196. White also confirmed that Punk will be in attendance at the fight.
Gall has been speculated as Punk’s potential opponent for the last week or so after being featured on Dana White’s Looking for a Fight YouTube series. He trains with the Gracie New Jersey Academy and fought in front of White at a regional show at the 2300 Arena in Philadelphia (the former ECW Arena in another pro wrestling tie-in).
Fielding questions from fans and media at the UFC 193 Q&A in Sydney, Australia, Dana White spoke about Nick Diaz’s 5-year suspension and what his initial thoughts were.
Submission Radio was on hand for the event and have the clip for you below!
“We’ve been here (Australia). When this thing went down, we’ve been here. And many people who know me and know the sport, I’ve been a very reactionary person in the past. I’m a little older and a little wiser now. I don’t just react, I have to know all the facts. I don’t know all the facts, you know. When you hear this – because it’s so jarring when you hear this. It’s like, wait a minute, this guy was suspended for five years and got a 150,000 dollar fine for marijuana? So you can completely take that out of context too, but that’s his third offense. It’s his third offense, and let’s all be honest here, Nick Diaz doesn’t exactly play by the rules. You know, listen, everybody would love to hang out and smoke weed all day and not play by the rules. It sounds awesome. It’s sounds like, you know, it sounds like the great thing to do (laughs). But in reality, you can’t do that, and especially when you’re dealing with the government. Nick was also in a situation where Nick hadn’t paid his taxes in a long time, you know. You can’t do that either. So it has to be more than ‘hey the guy smoked weed and…’ – I don’t know all the facts yet. We’re leaving tomorrow morning. When I get home, I will hear all the facts. I promise you, you will hear from me soon on the Nick Diaz situation. I have to figure out all the facts first.”
Speaking at the UFC 193 fan Q&A in Sydney, Australia, Dana White squashed the latest rumors about the UFC planning Fedor Emelianenko vs. Anderson Silva at light heavyweight, which were started by Chael Sonnen. Submission Radio was on hand for the event and have the clip for you below! VIDEO LINK: https://youtu.be/G1ruu2aRBtM Quote:
“That’s completely false (laughs). You know, the Fedor thing has been this weird deal for a long time. We’ve obviously talked to Fedor many times and tried to get it done, and we’ll see how this thing plays out. But no, there’s absolutely no truth to that whatsoever. Sorry Chael.”
On this week’s Chad Dukes Wrestling Show ( Wednesdays at 7pm on CBS Radio’s 106.7 The Fan DC, Podcast available on iTunes & Play.it) we discussed the comments by UFC President Dana White on Dukes’ afternoon drive program, Chad Dukes Versus the World responding to his infamous “fake” comment regarding pro wrestling.
White offered the following clarification to his comments.
“Listen, try to do anything today without pissing people off. Try it. I mean anything you say people get mad, you just gotta not care and I don’t care. Anything you say on Twitter or Instagram or anywhere these days every week I have a different group mad at me so you know it’s always something, but it’s still the world we live in today. My Twitter and social media has beene xactly the same since the day I got on it and one of the things, you said it best, the more successful you become, the bigger something gets, the harder it is to be yourself and to really speak honestly because somebody ends up getting mad. You literally just have to get to the point where you just don’t care who gets mad and that’s how I am.”
“I’ve had my, you know, my battles with Vince [McMahon] behind the scenes with some stuff that we’ve worked on but I respect all the guys in the WWE in the wrestling profession. We have so many guys that are that are fans of the UFC and when they come to the events we take very good careof ’em, we treat ’em with respect, I have yet to meet a bad guy from the wrestling world. Everybody is really classy and everybody’s really cool. My wrestling thing was just a response to an idiot on social media that was talking smack so I kind of gave him a zinger back and the whole wrestling world went crazy on me. But it is what it is, to be honest with you I really don’t care.”
