UFC President Dana White has rejected some of the comments were made a few days ago by eight division champion Manny Pacquiao - who claims that his team approached the biggest star in the UFC, Conor McGregor, to discuss a potential fight in 2018.
"That would be weird, because (McGregor’s) under contract with us,” White told MMAjunkie. “If that’s true, I will be suing Manny Pacquiao and whoever is representing him.”
Pacquiao has expressed interest in facing McGregor - after the MMA star made his professional boxing debut back in August.
McGregor fought with the comebacking five division champion Floyd Mayweather, who won the contest with a tenth round TKO at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Both McGregor and Mayweather made a fortune from the fight, with 4 million pay-per-view buys - revenue numbers that created a boxing frenzy as several top boxing names have called out McGregor.
In 2018, White and the UFC brass are going to enter the world of boxing with their "Zuffa Boxing" brand - which is going to be run under the same ownership umbrella as UFC.
According to veteran promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank, the only reason White is planning to enter the boxing market is because the UFC is experiencing a severe decline in revenue and may go under in the not too distance future.
White believes the opposite. He expects to make big waves, and feels that eventually he will be the one on top looking down at Arum.
“You’ll see, Bob,” White said. “We’ll see at the end. Bob’s the same guy who said the UFC would never work, and the UFC was loosing ‘oodles’ of money, whatever the f*** ‘oodles of money’ means. Look at what we’ve done and look at where we are. I mean, come on. At the end of the day, we’ll see who stands where when the smoke clears and the dust settles.
“I’ll give it to him, though. For a f***ing 95-year-old dude, this guy’s pretty feisty, man. I’ll give it to him. I’ll give him that.”