Even though he’s wildly wealthy, I don’t envy anything about Dana White’s life. For one, the dude looks like an cue ball that only takes breaks from lifting shoulders to drink cheap beer. For another, his job is to deal with all the UFC hotheads we all laugh about but definitely would never want to be in an elevator with. It’s like watching US soldiers killing ISIS. Do I love it? Of course, but would I ever do it? Fuck no. I went to prep school. Sure, I love Conor McGregor, but from afar. I also think Nate Diaz is hilarious. Mostly because of this gem of an interview:
But I would never want to have a conversation with the guy. I mean, can he even successfully employ 3+ syllable words in everyday speech?
So, with all that being said, I can say with confidence that I don’t envy Dana White’s latest comedy of errors concerning his attempts to schedule the rematch between Nate Diaz and Conor McGregor.
Via MMA Fighting:
“”…what drives me crazy is when you have a contract. Everybody sits down at one point and we do a deal. Everybody is happy. You shake hands, you hug. And then we move onto the next fight and everybody wants to blow up the deal.”
It’s not like we went in and renegotiated. This was a big myth coming out of that fight. Conor McGregor has never, ever — not only does he step up and take big fights last minute, moved up however many pounds to fight Nate and was willing to fight anybody; that’s why people love Conor, because Conor will fight anybody, anywhere, anytime — he has never come back and tried to renegotiate a contract, ever. Ever.
“So that was a big myth that he was doing that. Nate, we signed a new deal going into that fight, then he signed the contract for UFC 200. So then Conor doesn’t show up for UFC 200, and now Nate is trying to blow up the deal. It’s just frustrating. But listen, that’s the business we’re in. This is what we do. Everybody is not going to be happy all the time. It’s part of the deal, so now our job is, Lorenzo (Fertitta) and I have to sit down and try to figure out how to make this deal work.”
“We’ve been going back and forth and trying to make this fight happen, but the problem is timing,” White said. “Now we’re running out of time, because I’ve already got — this fight is supposed to be August 20th, or something like that. I’ve already got September 20th done. I’ve already got that card made, it’s done, and now we’re moving onto 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 is going to have to pick a new opponent that he would like to fight, or lose that date.””
I mean, this is like a sitcom. Grumpy father-figure tries to bring two estranged together, things go wrong, rinse and repeat. “Dana and the Immigrants”. Can I say that? Well, whatever, working title if I can’t. With all this information, though, I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t see McGregor and Diaz fight again for years. And we have to take stock here. Both fighters keep saying how badly they want this fight. But, if they really wanted it so badly, wouldn’t they just fight with whatever money they were given? Is it crazy to think that Diaz is maybe, just maybe, a tad worried about getting back into the ring with McGregor? Also, if both men know about the deadline, why are neither of them trying to meet in the middle here. Do they forget that people getting paid to fight each other is a new thing. The Romans used to just toss them into the ring and make them do it for free. And one of them died. Why are these two so confident that this new-age gladiatorial rings will stick? These guy shouldn’t be counting their chickens before they hatch here. Take the money and run, fellas. Because one day, there may not be anymore.