With lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov now out of UFC 249 and Justin Gaethje taking his headlining spot to fight Tony Ferguson, Dana White has been explaining how this impacts another major 155lb player, Conor McGregor.
“This impacts everybody,” White admitted on ESPN. “There’s three fights that have already been postponed, we’re going to work out over the next several weeks and I don’t know where this puts anybody.
“Conor really wants that rematch with Khabib. Well Khabib and Tony or Gaethje won’t fight now until probably September.”
So, as things stand it seems that White is ruling out the possibility that McGregor could jump the queue and fight Nurmagomedov first, due to the fact that the winner of Ferguson and Gaethje will become the interim champion.
It’s a situation that’s sure to frustrate McGregor, and White himself had been known to be interested in booking a second meeting between the Irish superstar and Nurmagomedov, but he says it’s just a sign of the times that we live in at the moment.
“Nobody saw this coming. This is one of those things you can’t predict or see coming. It happened but we’re rolling with it and we’re going to get it figured out.”
Meanwhile, With McGregor’s main options having been ruled out for the time being it will be interesting to see whether that now paves the way for a trilogy fight with Nate Diaz instead.
