DANA WHITE SAYS — in his own inimitable way — that he has not been sidelined by the UFC’s biggest star, Conor McGregor.
Respected MMA journalist Jeremy Botter of Bleacher Report told Off The Ball this week that the relationship between the UFC chief and its most marketable fighter has cooled recently.
Last night White wrote:
Botter says McGregor has long-term plans to strike out on his own and make a Croke Park fight a reality.
“Conor has never wanted to be a cog in the wheel,” he told Newstalk. “If you’re in the UFC, you’re a cog in the wheel. You’re just another part of the machine, you’re expendable, you get what they give you even if you get to a level where Conor has gotten to.
“Conor McGregor wants to be the wheel. That’s been his dream from the beginning. He doesn’t want to just make a lot of money. He wants to make all of the money and he is following that boxing model and actually one thing that hasn’t been publicised much is a year ago, he actually trademarked the term McGregor Sports and Entertainment and his girlfriend Dee Devlin is actually the president of that company in Dublin.
“He is already laying the ground work for this. I believe his time in the UFC is limited. I’m not saying he’s going to be out of the UFC this year or next year. But I do believe he has a set amount of fights left that he wants to do with the UFC and then at that points he is going to go out on his own.
“His intention honestly is to do Croke Park on his own. He wants to do that fight in Croke Park, the UFC are never going to do it just because of the timezone difference and how much cost it would represent to put on a pay-per-view in the afternoon and other parts of the world.”
