UFC President raised eyebrows recently when he suggested UFC 229’s lightweight title clash between Khabib Nurmagomedov and Conor McGregor could set a new UFC pay-per-view record of 2 million buys, but now he’s upped the ante even further.
“It’s massive,” White told ESPN when asked how big the event on October 6th in Las Vegas is going to be. “There has been a lot of talk about this thing doing 2 million buys. We’re trending right now at 2.5 million buys so that’s how big this fight is. The biggest fight we’d ever done was Diaz vs. McGregor at almost 1.6 million pay-per-view buys. Then we did the Floyd Mayweather fight. And now this by far is the biggest fight and one of the biggest fights ever in combat sports to be honest with you.”
White also addressed McGregor’s volatile personality and suggested that what he brings to the table means that he gets away with things that other fighters wouldn’t.
“Conor works very well with us,” White said. “We work well with him. There’s certain things you have to deal with Conor McGregor but he’s worth it. For example, the New York thing. The fact he thought he could come here and have this beef with Khabib in the middle of New York City and the way that it was done that was obviously the craziest thing. Normal, typical stuff for Conor is showing up an hour late for press conferences.”
The UFC president also spoke about McGregor’s long absence from MMA over the past two years and suggested that he always thought that regardless of how much money he has made, the Irish superstar would find his way back to doing what he does best in the end.
“I said this might be the last time you see Conor McGregor when you make his kind of money. He loves to fight. The reality is this — when you make a lot of money when you haven’t had money — you go out and buy a bunch of things, you take care of your family and do some fun stuff but it gets old real quick. It took Conor two years and here we are.”
