Dana White: Conor McGregor's tweet about being back
on UFC 200 'not true'
By
Marc Raimondi @marc_raimondi on Apr 25, 2016, 11:48a
202
The situation just gets messier.
UFC president
Dana White told the Los Angeles Times on Monday that the promotion has no deal in place for
Conor McGregor to fight at
UFC 200, despite a tweet claiming just that from McGregor on Sunday night.
White told the Times that McGregor saying he is back on the card is "not true."
"We haven't talked [to] Conor or his manager since the press conference [Friday]," White said. "I don't know why he would tweet that."
McGregor
sent out a tweet late Sunday night thanking White and UFC CEO
Lorenzo Fertitta for putting him back on the card. As of Monday morning, it had more than 78,000 retweets.
McGregor, the UFC's featherweight champion and the biggest financial draw in the organization, was all set to fight Nate Diaz in the UFC 200 main event until last Tuesday. On that day, McGregor tweeted a cryptic message about an early retirement. Then, White explained a few hours later that McGregor had been yanked from the Diaz fight, because he would not fly to Las Vegas for promotional obligations last week.
McGregor, 27, said in a statement Thursday that he is not yet paid to promote and wanted to focus on training to get revenge on Diaz, who he lost to at UFC 196 in March. McGregor said he was absolutely not retired.
The statement didn't help. White doubled down Friday at a UFC 200 press conference that McGregor is definitely off the card, because it wasn't fair to the other participants that they all came to Vegas and other cities to promote and McGregor would not.
At that same press conference, Diaz made it clear there was only one opponent he wanted to fight at UFC 200: McGregor:
White
also told TMZ on Monday that the McGregor-Diaz fight is 100 percent off.
"I feel like the scene in 'Step Brothers' when they ask if they can build the bunk beds," White said. "I don't know how many more times I can say the fight is off or how many more press conferences I can have saying the fight is off for people to believe it's off."
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