UFC president Dana White explains why the promotion didn’t turn to McGregor instead of Max Holloway.
Roughly seven hours before UFC president Dana White revealed to ESPN that Tony Ferguson was injured and out of his UFC 223 title fight with Khabib Nurmagomedov, Khabib threw out an interesting Tweet on social media.
”Where are you now?” he asked, tagging Conor McGregor.
Where are you now? @TheNotoriousMMA
— khabib nurmagomedov (@TeamKhabib) April 1, 2018
We imagine this was probably around the time he learned that Tony Ferguson’s knee was too injured for him to fight. Maybe he was told about featherweight champ Max Holloway stepping in to replace Ferguson, and maybe he wasn’t. Either way, he went ahead and asked a question some other MMA fans are asking: where’s the McGregor that was allegedly so eager to step in last minute at UFC 222 to fight Frankie Edgar?
”I don’t think Conor McGregor could make the weight on six days notice,” White told ESPN. “That’s a tough weight cut for him. And Conor is not the guy I want to throw in as a late replacement fighter. He’s a guy I want to make a fight with and have the right amount of time to promote the fight. I think Conor could return in September, and it could be against one of these guys.”
Having enough time to promote a McGregor fight properly was the reasoning the UFC used to turn down his offer to fight at UFC 222, so it’s not surprising that reasoning hasn’t changed here. And given how quiet things were from Thursday when Ferguson was injured to Sunday when the UFC announced Holloway as a replacement, we doubt McGregor even heard a sniff about the fight.
Sorry Khabib, no last minute red panty night for you!