Rift, what rift?
It seems rumours of a distance between UFC head honcho Dana White and Conor McGregor may be more than a little premature.
Speaking in London ahead of Michael Bisping’s fight with Anderson Silva at the O2 Arena, White elaborated on details of the “crazy week” that saw Rafael dos Anjos withdraw from UFC 196 and be replaced by Nate Diaz.
Some of the sequence of events had emerged already during the week but White has explained with a fair degree of awe just how laid back McGregor was about who would step in to replace Dos Anjos.
“I’ve been doing this for 16 years in the UFC and I’ve been in the fight business for a long time,” White told MMAFighting’s Ariel Helwani.
“You don’t pick up the phone and have conversations anymore with guys like you have with Conor McGregor.
“There’s a lot of people that talk publicly – ‘I’ll do this, I’ll do that, I’ll fight anybody’. Nobody really means it when you’re on the phone and you’re not in front of a press conference or doing interviews.
“This guy means it. He’s moving from 145lb to 170lb and he keeps this fun, man. He will literally fight anybody.
“When we called him and told him what was going on. First he was like ‘you got to be kidding me’ when he heard Dos Anjos broke his foot.
“And then he was like, ‘alright well I’m getting to the gym now. I’ll fight anybody. You pick, I’ll fight anybody. Call me tomorrow and let me know who I’m fighting.’
“There’s no reason for make to make this shit up. This guy is the real deal. When you pick up the phone and talk to a guy and he’s like this it’s a throwback. He reminds me of Chuck Liddell and these guys that just wanted to fight.
“Now you pick up the phone to guys who are going to make millions of dollars and they don’t want to fight.”
If that wasn’t fawning enough White also tackled head on the rumours that there has been something of a rift between himself and McGregor over the past few months as the Dubliner’s power has grown within the sport.
“Where has there ever been any signs of a rift between Conor and I? Where? Not only is there not a rift between Conor and I, I don’t know who I respect more than him as a fighter. The kid has my absolute and total respect.
“There are a lot of things that are said in public but it’s the private conversations that are the ones that matter. Everything that Conor McGregor says in public is 10 times more hardcore in private and I have ultimate respect for that.”
White also revealed the other fighters who were in contention to replace Dos Anjos and step into the Octagon with McGregor at the MGM Grand on March 5th.
“The first two guys we were going after were Jose and Frankie Edgar to take the fight at 155lb. But then I started getting calls from BJ Penn, Pettis and Urijah Faber was in the running too.
“Urijah and I probably talked more than any of the other fighters.That one was really close.
“But then talking to Nate is always interesting so we were going back to forth and we thought Nate Diaz was the fight to make. It’s the fight fans wanted to see.
“If we were’t going to be doing a title fight at 55 or a title fight at 70 with Robbie Lawler then this is the fight to make.
“This is one of these deals where you have a fight that was about Conor moving up and trying to take another belt at 155lb. When all belts were out the window we just thought what is a fun fight. There was a lot of buzz and a lot of energy about this fight. This is obviously a fight that people want to see. I think it’s going to do well.”
You can watch Ariel Helwani’s full interview with Dana White here.
