Slightly lost in all the furore over the rumours of a fight between UFC champion Conor McGregor and boxing superstar Floyd Mayweather, is the fact that McGregor and Nate Diaz still have some unfinished business in the Octagon.
Unfortunately for the UFC, the planned rematch between McGregor and Diaz just hit yet another roadblock.
You probably remember that the two fighters were set to square off again at UFC 200 on July 9, in a rematch of their March bout which Diaz shockingly won with a rear naked choke.
A photo posted by natediaz209 (@natediaz209) on
However, the bout infamously fell through after McGregor failed to fulfill media obligations in Las Vegas to promote the fight and the Irish superstar’s subsequent ‘retire young’ tweet sent the MMA world into a frenzy, but there are now hopes Diaz and McGregor will instead face off at UFC 202.
UFC President Dana White met with McGregor earlier this week and the two are reportedly back on good terms.
But it sounds like White’s meeting with Diaz didn’t go quite as well, with an MMA Junkie report about how badly the meeting went soon followed by a Dana tweet claiming it ‘wasn’t a good day’.
TMZ also reported that the meeting in California “ended abruptly when Dana was visibly angry, stood up and beelined it for his SUV”.
According to TMZ, White and UFC Chairman and CEO Lorenzo Fertitta traveled to a pub in Stockton to “seal the deal for a rematch between Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz”.
They were reportedly both in a jovial mood – that is, until talk turned to money and “it all went south and the UFC Prez stormed out of the tavern.”
This disappointing development comes hot on the heels of more positive news from the UFC and McGregor meeting on Thursday.
After chatting to Dana and Lorenzo, McGregor told ESPN:
It is what it is. It happens. This is the fight game. Sometimes emotions get into it. But it’s important to recognise that emotions have no place in business. That’s essentially what it was last night. We just set it aside. There’s no place for emotions in this. We are doing beautiful things. So let’s continue. Let’s fix it and let’s continue.
To be honest, at this point, we’d probably take any opponent for McGregor – Mayweather, Diaz, Aldo, Edgar – we just want to see him to fight somebody, anybody soon!
