UFC President Dana White is hoping to finalize one portion of the Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor deal by this coming Sunday.
If White is unable to get a deal done with McGregor (21-3 MMA, 9-1 UFC) by Sunday, he plans to move forward in another direction with the MMA superstar. If he's able to reach an agreement with McGregor, then White will begin negotiations with Mayweather (49-0, 26 KOs) and his team on Monday.
“I plan on having this thing locked up by this Sunday and then moving on to Team Mayweather and start to negotiate with them,” White told “The Jim Rome Show” on CBS Sports Radio. “If we really do get it done in that timeframe, then this thing could possibly happen. Again, I still have to go negotiate with them. There’s no guarantee that we’re going to come to a deal.”
The negotiations have been dragging on for month's between the two athletes.
White was hoping to stage the event on September 16th, but now the pay-per-view date has been taken by the middleweight blockbuster between Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin.
White believes the chances of reaching a deal with McGregor is very good - but White is not as optimistic about reaching a deal with Mayweather.
“That was the date we were shooting for,” White said. “I was doing an interview earlier and they said, ‘Well the MGM says you hadn’t held the date.’ We hadn’t – we hadn’t held the date. But that’s the date we were shooting for. … I didn’t see any big fights coming up that we couldn’t have took the date from if they ended up with that date.
“Then they come up with Canelo and ‘GGG,’ which is a real fight. That’s a fight I’ll actually buy tickets for and go to myself. So, yeah, life waits for nobody. We should have moved faster, we should have moved further along in the negotiations, and it’s our own fault.
“I think (the chances of a deal with McGregor) are pretty good. Hopefully Monday I’m going to sit down and negotiate with Team Mayweather. I just can’t keep messing with this thing. I have to run my business and I have to focus on all the other things that are going on around here.”