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Chael Sonnen has an interesting take on Dana White’s recent interview with TMZ Sports.
UFC president Dana White recently shot down any talk of a potential fight between Conor McGregor and Jorge Masvidal in an exclusive interview with TMZ Sports, claiming that ‘Gamebred’, a natural welterweight, is far too big for ‘The Notorious’.
“Masvidal is too big for Conor. There’s plenty of fights for [Masvidal] in his weight division without Conor. He’s too big for Conor. [McGregor] doesn’t belong at 170 [pounds]. He’s got the balls to fight at 170, but he doesn’t belong there,” White said.
Former UFC title challenger turned podcast host and MMA analyst Chael Sonnen, however, believes White’s comments should be taken with a grain of salt.
In fact, speaking on a recent episode of Beyond the Fight, ‘The American Gangster’ said White uttered those comments to provoke a reaction from McGregor, who once wanted to challenge then-champ Tyron Woodley for the UFC welterweight title.
“TMZ confronted Dana White and asked him straight up, Masvidal vs. Conor McGregor, yes or no? Dana White said, ‘no we’re not gonna do that fight. Jorge is too big for him.’ Everybody was just happy to accept that,” Sonnen said, per BJPenn.com. “‘Okay we’ve got our answer, take Jorge off. I guess we gotta look back at Tony now. Hey is there anything to that ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone fight we heard about? Hey what’s Al Iaquinta up to?’ Guys, guys please, please don’t miss this. The biggest fight promoter in the history of promotion just went to TMZ, one of the biggest outlets aside from ESPN itself to cover this sport on a mainstream level. He picked his words very carefully and if any of you missed this, come on!”
“‘No we’re not going to do that fight,’ is all anybody took away. They missed the second sentence of why. Because Jorge is too big. Do you think that’s gonna sit well with an ego like Conor McGregor? Do you think Conor McGregor does not know that Dana White just told the world that he personally believes that Jorge could beat Conor and even offered up an excuse? Do you think that that story was out for more than five minutes before it got to Conor and he grabbed his phone and contacted Dana to say, ‘hey you think he’s too big for me?’ I can guarantee you that message from Conor to Dana has already happened.”
Masvidal recently earned MMA notoriety with his stunning five-second knockout of Ben Askren at UFC 239, and the ex-street fighter is thought to be next in line for a title shot against newly-crowned welterweight champ Kamaru Usman.
McGregor, on the other hand, is thought to be retired. The former UFC featherweight and lightweight champ sent out a cryptic tweet earlier this month where he claimed to be ‘done’ with MMA.