Floyd Mayweather has been talking up the possibility of a fight with Khabib Nurmagomedov after being called out by the lightweight champion, but UFC president Dana White doesn’t seem to believe it’s going to happen.
“Don’t pay attention to it,” White told ESPN. “First of all, the Mayweather team has not approached us at all. Khabib is under contract with the UFC; we haven’t talked to anybody from the Mayweather team. Floyd is very good at getting his name back out there when he’s ready to.”
The most recent word out of Nurmagomedov’s camp was that he was looking to defend his title against Tony Ferguson next and then potentially retire afterwards, but the lure of a big-money boxing bout with Mayweather appears to interest him too.
As for Mayweather, he appeared to have retired after his victory over Conor McGregor last year, but has since indicated that he intends to return to rematch Manny Pacquiao next year and has also kept the door open for fights with Nurmagomedov and McGregor too.
However, as White suggests, Mayweather is very good at manipulating the media, such as when he claimed earlier in the year that he was going to start training for an MMA fight – something which never actually came to fruition, so it remains to be seen whether there is actually any truth to his latest comments.
