Dana White Reacts To Conor McGregor Bar Fight Rumors

UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor is currently on the sidelines negotiating a new deal with his employers to finally return to the Octagon, a deal that UFC President Dana White insists may never be made despite their efforts.

But with his time off, McGregor has seemingly got into a nonstop streak of trouble in his native Dublin, with reports linking him to an alleged barroom brawl possibly involving a member of an Irish drug cartel surfacing today. The rumors came on the heels of his over-the-top cage storming at Bellator 187, which White told reporters today via MMA Fighting had supposedly kept him off of December 30’s UFC 219 no matter if his manager had suggested otherwise:

“He was being dealt with by the head of the ABC,” White said. “We were gonna fight him, regardless of what [McGregor’s manager] Audie [Attar] says, we were working on a fight for him at the end of the year. And he’s just not ready.”

While the Bellator 187 incident may have resulted in a flimsy-at-best ‘punishment’ (although he could be facing more from the ABC), the bar fight rumors aren’t going to get him in any trouble yet. White told those same reporters via Yahoo! Sports’ Kevin Iole that he hadn’t heard much about the bar fight reports, but believed they were false because if true, would have resulted in an all-out freefall of media coverage:

“No, [I don’t know anything about it], but I don’t think it’s true,” White said. “Conor can walk down the street and it’s big news now. If this is true, I just have to believe it would be off-the-charts crazy.”

White may have a point there, and no official complaints have been filed with Irish police despite them acknowledging they had been informed of the reports.

Time will tell if it amounts to anything, but at this point, it’s not a huge surprise to see the UFCs front man downplay the out-of-the-cage troubles for their biggest star, especially when they need him back in the Octagon for a huge pay-per-view payday soon.