White confirms McGregor out until May

After UFC featherweight champion Conor McGregor beat lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez at UFC 205 last Saturday, he had a couple of announcements. One, he and partner Dee Devlin were having their first child in May, so he didn’t want to fight until then. And two, before he fought again, he wanted equity.

And then a third goal emerged – McGregor appears to be angling for a boxing match with Floyd Mayweather. However, the boxing match is still in rumor stage, and the equity negotiation will presumably happen at some point, but UFC president Dana White has now confirmed that McGregor will be out until May at the earliest.

At the same time, former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey is winding her career down. And former light heayvweight champion Jon Jones is out until July on a PED suspension. It would appear to be a brutal three punch combination to the company, but White is undaunted. In fact, he is enthusiastic about deepening the bond with WME-IMG’s Ari Emanuel.

[McGregor] won’t fight before May, said White to Lance Pugmire for the LA Times. His girl gets super stressed out when he fights. He doesn’t want her having any of that stress while she’s pregnant. He’s good. He should take time off. He’s been fighting nonstop. Nothing wrong with him taking time off. It’s good for him and her and it’s good for the baby.

We’ve done this for 16 years, with a lot of big stars who couldn’t fight or moved on – Chuck Liddell, Anderson Silva, Georges St-Pierre. There’s not a day in this office I don’t get the question, ‘What are we going to do about this guy?’ Every day I turn around, I’ve got a reporter saying we’ve peaked.

If I listened to any of that … , we probably would be done.”

Every day I walk in this office is a new day for the sport. This is what we do, what we are. I’ve been doing this for years, and I can tell you, 2017 will be dynamite.”

What Ari brings to the table, what he does and knows is amazing … we have a meeting in Russia and we’re going to China after that, and working on some stuff that’ll blow people’s minds and be a lot of fun over the next five to seven years.”