When Conor McGregor announced his retirement from mixed martial arts last week, he left the UFC as the biggest star in the sport.
The Irishman didn’t explain why he was walking away from competition, but after making it clear he was excited to return to the Octagon, speculation grew that negotiations with UFC president Dana White and the UFC were the cause.
Certainly, that’s what White himself believes.
Speaking with Game On Vegas, White said he planned to get together in a meeting with McGregor over the course of the next few weeks and resolve any differences the pair had.
“I think that there’s some things that Conor wants, and I think that Conor wants to get together face to face, he and I, and we probably will in the next couple of weeks. We’ll get this thing figured out.” White said on the show.
And what exactly would making things right look like? Well, White didn’t go into detail, but he did say he believed he knew how to make the Irishman feel appreciated.
“Who gets respected more than Conor McGregor does?” White said. “Come on. Definitely not by me. And e’s got a lot of money too. He’s stuck on this thing where he wants a piece of the ownership. If you look at basketball, Michael Jordan didn’t own a piece of the league. Is Conor very valuable to the sport and to the brand UFC? Of course he is. But that’s a tough one. I think there are other ways we can make him happy.”
Certainly White seems to understand the magnitude of McGregor’s star power, as when the show’s host asked him for two dream fights he wished he could make, White quickly suggested two fights starring the UFC’s first double champion.
“The biggest fights if I look right now,” White said, “If Floyd [Mayweather] came over to MMA. So if Floyd came over to the UFC and fought Conor again in a rematch, that would be huge. And a Conor-Khabib [Nurmagomedov] rematch is massive.
“Really the two biggest fights in the world right now are with Conor McGregor.”
–