Dana White Has A Deadline For Conor McGregor Deal To Fight Floyd Mayweather

In an interview with “The Jim Rome Show” on CBS Sports Radio (via MMA Junkie), UFC President Dana White said that he’s hoping to finish negotiations with Conor McGregor’s team for a fight with Floyd Mayweather by the end of the weekend. He also spoke about losing the planned September 16 date for the fight due to a booking of a fight between Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin. Here are highlights:

On when he hopes to end negotiations with McGregor: “I plan on having this thing locked up by this Sunday and then moving on to Team Mayweather and start to negotiate with them. 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.”

On losing September 16 as the date: “That was the date we were shooting for. 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.”

On the possibility of a deal: “I think (the chances of a deal with McGregor) are pretty good. 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.”