It has been rumored that UFC president Dana White walked out of a recent meeting with Nate Diaz and his management after the two parties were unable to come to terms for a UFC 202 rematch with Conor McGregor. And, as it turns out, the rumors were true.
“Yeah, that was true. It wasn’t necessarily so much Nate Diaz as it was the management. But yeah, I did,” Dana confirmed on The Herd.
“What drives me crazy is you have a contract,” he added. “Everybody sits down at one point and we do a deal. Everybody’s happy, you shake hands, you hug. Then we move on to the next fight and everybody wants to blow up the deal… The problem is that we have a deal. He has a contract.”
With McGregor making millions per fight, it’s clear Diaz wants a bigger piece of the pie after defeating the Irish featherweight champ via submission when they met for the first time at UFC 196 in March. But, according to Dana, McGregor has always honored his contracts and expects Diaz to do the same.
“This was a big myth coming out of that fight – Conor McGregor has never… he has never come back and tried to re-negotiate a contract. Ever.”
Dana and UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta had intended to make Diaz vs. McGregor 2 happen at UFC 202 in August, after the bout was scrapped from July’s UFC 200 card. But, with the current state of things, it looks like McGregor may have to get over the idea of avenging his only UFC loss any time soon if he intends to fight within the next few months.
“Lorenzo and I have to sit down and try to figure out how to make this deal work,” said Dana. “We’ve been going back and forth and trying to make this fight happen. The problem is timing; now we’re running out of time. This fight’s supposed to be August 20th, or something like that. I’ve already got September (10th, UFC 203) done. I’ve got that card made, it’s done, and now we’re moving on to the next one. So we’re going to get to a point here where we’re going to run out of time, and we’re just not going to be able to make the fight. So Conor’s either going to have to pick a new opponent that he would like to fight or lose that date.”
