Dana White Says He ‘Can’t Keep Messing’ With McGregor vs. Mayweather

UFC President Dana White isn’t closing the door on a potential boxing fight between Floyd Mayweather and UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor, but he does know that both sides need to start moving forward with negotiations.

Recently speaking on the topic, White said that he hopes to have a deal done with McGregor on Sunday before beginning negotiations with Team Mayweather on Monday:

“I plan on having this thing locked up by this Sunday and then moving on to Team Mayweather and start to negotiate with them,” White told “The Jim Rome Show” on CBS Sports Radio. “If we really do get it done in that timeframe, then this thing could possibly happen. Again, I still have to go negotiate with them. There’s no guarantee that we’re going to come to a deal.” 

“I think (the chances of a deal with McGregor) are pretty good,” White said. “Hopefully Monday I’m going to sit down and negotiate with Team Mayweather. I just can’t keep messing with this thing. I have to run my business and I have to focus on all the other things that are going on around here.”

White attended a boxing fight between Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada last weekend. After the fight, which “Canelo” won by unanimous decision, it was announced that “Canelo” would be taking on middleweight kingpin Gennady Golovkin on Sept. 16, 2017.

White said that he was hoping to have McGregor fight Mayweather on this date, but admits they ‘should have moved faster’ with negotiations:

“That was the date we were shooting for,” White said. “I was doing an interview earlier and they said, ‘Well the MGM says you hadn’t held the date.’ We hadn’t – we hadn’t held the date. But that’s the date we were shooting for. … I didn’t see any big fights coming up that we couldn’t have took the date from if they ended up with that date.

“Then they come up with Canelo and ‘GGG,’ which is a real fight. That’s a fight I’ll actually buy tickets for and go to myself. So, yeah, life waits for nobody. We should have moved faster, we should have moved further along in the negotiations, and it’s our own fault.”

Do you still have hope that Mayweather and McGregor will meet in the squared circle?