McGregor Blames Politics Of Prizefighting For Delay
On Tuesday in the Ukraine, Conor McGregor explained why you’ve not seen him inside the Octagon for over a year.
“Funny enough, I just want to compete now,” McGregor said at a press conference for betting site Parimatch. “I was trying to get the Dec. 14th card, for whatever reason they’ve been holding me back. I’m giving them dates, I’m saying I want to fight this date, this date, this date, this date in a row, and we had opponents selected and everything and they’re just making it very difficult for me for whatever reason.
“So now I’m kind of in a position where I’m attempting to set up a charity event. I’ve done this before in my hometown but I done it in an amateur boxing event at my old boxing club, Crumlin Boxing Club, but I want to do it in mixed martial arts competition also. Create an event, find an opponent, compete, zero prize. I do not care about the prize. The prize is in my home. I have five prizes in my home that I seek to get, I’ve got them. I just want to compete now, I want to come back, I want to get sharp, I want to show the best of myself and continue to climb. So that’s what I am seeking to do. So we are looking to do that sometime in December, hopefully have a charity mixed martial arts event for zero prize. The prize will go to charity, so that’s what we are aiming for.”
“I even offered for the Frankie Edgar bout to donate my purse to charity,” McGregor said of a potential matchup that was torpedoed by UFC President Dana White. “Because they were saying we won’t make enough money on the Frankie fight and I was like, I don’t care, don’t worry about me, give my purse to charity.
“But for whatever reason it’s being made difficult. Like I said, we’re almost there. It’s never easy with this crowd.”
“For me, I am looking at—I used to fight every couple of weeks before the UFC came, then it was every couple of months,” McGregor said.
“Now the politics of [prize-fighting] got involved and it’s almost if I won and then I go off. I do not like that, you can’t be like that in this game. I must continue, consistency is another word, you must be consistent.
“Once we get the first one going and we get past the politics of this, I will continue to go,” McGregor continued. “I’ve faced very little damage inside the Octagon so I’m eager to get going and continue. If I look at the run I had up to Eddie Alvarez when I won the second world title, it was consecutive bouts. Bout, bout, bout, so I went into that Eddie Alvarez fight sharp, aware, fully prepared. And what happened that night, one of the greatest performances in any title fight ever in the UFC. So that’s what we are looking to continue on in the next time. Again, analyze what went wrong in the past, analyze what went right in the past, use it to go forward to the future.”
“We’re very, very close to announcing it,” McGregor said of a return fight in 2020. “Not just yet, but surely over the course of this trip we should have an announcement, so that’s what we were aiming for.”
Transcribed by MMA Fighting