Dana White has decided to give his side of the story regarding the featherweight title situation after a week in which Conor McGregor vacated the belt and Jose Aldo was crowned the new champion.
A few days ago McGregor’s long-time coach John Kavanagh criticised the way the UFC dealt with the situation, claiming that it was a knee-jerk reaction so that they could help add credibility to the new UFC 206 headliner between Max Holloway and Anthony Pettis by making it for the interim 145lb title.
“He’s misinformed,” White told Yahoo! Sports when asked about Kavanagh. “Yeah, he doesn’t know all that has gone on, I guess. Do you think I just did this? This was Conor’s decision.”
White went on to explain that making Holloway Vs Pettis for the interim belt was his way of helping to overcome the bottleneck at the top end of the featherweight division had formed over the course of the past year.
“Look, I let Conor fight [Nate] Diaz and then I let him fight Diaz again,” White said. “Then there was the whole 155-pound thing I let him do. But at the end of the day, him doing that tied up the division for a year. There’s a logjam there and a lot of guys were [angry].
“This was my way to fix the logjam. I wanted Aldo to fight Holloway for the belt, but he needed more time. So I looked at it and I said, well, it makes sense to make Aldo the champion and then have Holloway and Pettis fight for the interim title, and when Jose’s ready, barring any crazy injuries, the winner can fight him.”
During the interview, White also gave his opinion on the latest news that McGregor has successfully applied for a boxing license in the state of California, leading to renewed speculation that he wants to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr in the ring.
“I have no idea what Conor is doing,” White said. “Conor’s Conor. He does his thing. But he’s under contract to me. Who knows with this guy? Who knows what he is up to. I just let Conor be Conor. And the other thing is, it’s fun to talk about this fight and what might happen, but what commission would let that fight happen? Really, think about that.”
