Conor McGregor Challenges Dustin Poirier To An "Exhibition" MMA Fight For Charity In December (On The Same Day As UFC 256)
This story is a bit of a shitshow at this point, so if you're not all caught up on it, read THIS, and then THIS.
tl;dr: Conor McGregor wants to fight in the UFC really badly, and has all year, but the UFC isn't making it happen for one reason or another (logistics, matchmaking, pandemic shit, etc.) so he's now lashing out. First, he posted DMs with Dana White, called him a liar, and said he's going over to the Middle East to box Manny Pacquiao, and now he's making Dustin Poirier offers for an "exhibition" MMA bout for charity - "zero to do with the UFC" - on the same day as a major UFC PPV (headlined by Kamaru Usman vs Gilbert Burns).
Got it? Got it.
Soooo this was an interesting move by Conor McGregor last night, huh?
Daniel Cormier kinda questioned whether or not Conor was truly willing to fight "anybody" after finding out he wouldn't step in as an alternate for the Khabib/Tony fight, and then requested a waaaay past his prime Diego Sanchez....
....which just absolutely set Conor off....
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I love DC as much as anybody but opening up with: "….you fat fool, what you saying?" is so god damn funny.
Dustin Poirier quoted that tweet with a simple: "Conor?", seemingly asking if his name was included in that "ANYONE" grouping, and it was indeed! Conor responded nearly immediately with the tweets at the start of this blog, Dustin accepted, and that's more or less where we're up to now.
This is actually a rematch that makes a tremendous amount of sense right now, and one I've been proposing for McGregor since the Cowboy fight, so it didn't surprise me that Conor was open to it, but the way he went about suggesting they go about it certainly did.
I feel like I don't even need to break the logistics of his offer down, because this is just simply NOT something the UFC would ever allow to happen - ESPECIALLY not on the same day as one of their shows - but I suppose this could cause a headache for em. This is, to me, exactly what the Pacquiao talk was all about: trying to force the UFC's hand into giving him a fight. I think he wants Uncle Dana to look at this and go, "I can't have this kid fightin outside the octagon! I gotta call him up and book this to happen in the UFC!", and who DOESN'T want that? Like I said - this fight makes complete and total sense right. Let em in that cage!!!
Some are suggesting he threw in the part about charity to make Dana/the UFC look bad when they inevitably shut this down/deny that it could happen legally, and that may be true I guess, but he probably will make a generous donation to Poirier's charity now that it's been brought up. McGregor always steps up for charity.
I'd say this has a 5-10% chance of going down at best, though. There's much better odds the Pacquiao fight happens in my eyes (and I won't be sold on that until ink has dried on the contracts). We'll just have to wait and see - never say never.