GEORGES ST-PIERRE makes his long-awaited return to the Octagon in November after four years away, but UFC president Dana White is looking further down the line.
And in this, the age of the ‘money fight,’ the possibility of a showdown between Conor McGregor and the former pay-per-view king is well and truly on the cards.
In a recent interview with TSN, White said that a potential McGregor-GSP bout couldn’t take place until the later stages of 2018, but he also didn’t deny the possibility that it could happen.
To make it a reality, White told TSN (via MMA Weekly) what would have to happen:
“GSP would need to defend his title first at 185 [pounds] and Conor has some business to handle himself,” he said.
“It would be a year and a half down the road before we would even talk about that.”
“Everybody’s intriguing for Conor McGregor. I mean, if you look at Conor McGregor at 145, 155 and 170 [pounds], everything is intriguing.”
He continued, teasing of the venue: “I don’t know where that would be.
“We could do it in Croke Park in Ireland, where there’s like 100,000 seats. You could do it here in Toronto, where we had 56,000 people, and you could do it in Vegas, which is always good, too.”
Of course, White hasn’t fully committed to the idea, but it’s a strong possibility in the future going by those comments.
Elsewhere, Paulie Malignaggi has confirmed that his team are in talks over a potential fight with the Dubliner.
“I know Al Haymon’s (Malignaggi’s advisor) talking to Dana White,” Malignaggi told FightHype.com. “I know they’re speaking, so if they want the fight they’ll make it.
“Once I spoke to Al and Team Haymon, and they told me they wanted to make this fight, I knew that the only was this fight doesn’t happen is if (Conor) had absolutely no balls.
The 36-year-old — who was drafted into McGregor’s camp for sparring ahead of the Mayweather fight but left after a highly publicised falling out — retired from boxing in March but says a clash with McGregor is the one fight he’ll come back for.
“This fight will pay him more, this fight will get him more exposure, this fight is a bigger fight than anybody else he has. There’s no more Mayweather fight. This fight is the biggest fight there is.
“So once they told me that, I knew the only way this doesn’t happen is if this guy has absolutely no balls.
“Which wouldn’t surprise me because he has no balls. But the way they’re going to present it to him, it’s going to be presented in a way where he really shouldn’t turn it down.”
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