Earlier this week, Conor McGregor shocked the world when he said he was retiring from mixed martial arts for good, only days after he stood on a bar and promised his fans a rubber match with Nate Diaz. During this time, a highly anticipated rematch with Khabib Nurmagomedov remained the fight that the UFC most looked forward to, all the while McGregor had gone public with his demands for ownership before he stepped back into the octagon.
Therefore, due to McGregor's unexpected retirement, many people speculated that his motivation was behind those demands, and sure enough, Dana White just confirmed that thought in a recent interview with TMZ.
"I've never had a bad conversation with Conor McGregor since he's been in the UFC," White said during the interview, before revealing a supposed text conversation where he directly asked for the UFC shares. White stated that McGregor said: "I feel like I should own a piece of the company," to which he replied, "Conor you know that's never going to happen." White did note, however, that their text exchange occurred weeks ago and not during the time of his announcement, as they've yet to actually discuss the matter in person.
From there, White said that despite his initial shock he wasn't all that surprised about the news, adding that "I don't know why everybody is so shocked about it, because when you think about, ever since the Floyd Mayweather fight, I've been saying 'you don't know if this guy is ever going to fight again.'"
With that said, White added that if McGregor wanted ownership of the UFC he had to go through the same measures as everyone else, by saying: "listen, if you want to own a piece of the company, you have to put up the money to buy a piece of the company... that's how it works."
Later on, when asked about the state of the UFC without McGregor in the picture, White suggested that he wasn't concerned at all, pointing out "that it's a part of sports, there will be others."
Source: TMZ
