Friday 2 December 2016 18:42, UK
UFC president Dana White admits he has no idea what Conor McGregor’s motivations are for obtaining a boxing licence in California.
McGregor raised some eyebrows earlier this week when the move was announced and White admits he is as much in the dark as everybody else, but stressed that the Irishman remains under contract with the UFC.
"I have no idea what Conor is doing," White told Yahoo Sports when asked his opinion of McGregor obtaining a boxing licence.
"Conor is Conor. He does his thing. But he's under contract to me. Who knows with this guy? Who knows what he is up to? I just let Conor be Conor.
"And the other thing is; it is fun to talk about this fight and what might happen, but what commission would let that fight happen? Really, think about that."
While White may be sceptical that a fight between McGregor - who has zero professional boxing fights - and an elite boxer would be sanctioned, the California State Athletic Commission indicated they would be more than happy to do so.
"He got a licence today and a federal ID," CSAC executive officer Andy Foster told MMAFighting.com. "He's a California boxer now. He's qualified.
"I'd love to see him fight in California. It just needs to be the right opponent. Certainly a high-level opponent. We're happy to license him. We're happy he's a California fighter."
White also addressed his decision to strip McGregor of his featherweight title just weeks after the Irish star knocked out Eddie Alvarez to become the first fighter in UFC history to hold two belts simultaneously.
The UFC decided to make Jose Aldo featherweight champion, with Max Holloway taking on Anthony Pettis at UFC 206 in Toronto for an interim title and the right to take on Aldo.
"Look, I let Conor fight [Nate] Diaz and then I let him fight Diaz again," White said of matches at UFC 196 and UFC 202, respectively, that the fighters split.
"Then there was the whole 155-pound thing I let him do. But at the end of the day, him doing that tied up the division for a year. There's a logjam there and a lot of guys were [angry].
"This was my way to fix the logjam. I wanted Aldo to fight Holloway for the belt, but he needed more time. So I looked at it and I said, well, it makes sense to make Aldo the champion and then have Holloway and Pettis fight for the interim title, and when Jose's ready, barring any crazy injuries, the winner can fight him."
White's decision to have McGregor vacate his featherweight title was criticised in some quarters because it only happened after light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier injured his quad and had to pull out of his scheduled title defence against Anthony Johnson at UFC 206.
That left the UFC scrambling to fill the main event slot and prompted the chain of events that led to Pettis and Holloway fighting for the interim featherweight world title.
McGregor's coach John Kavanagh was among those to criticise the move.
In an interview with Irish radio station Red FM, Kavanagh said: "They felt they had to make this for a title in order for it to sell so they brought in another interim title that Jose Aldo already has and then bumped Jose Aldo up to the current undisputed champion. Which just seems ridiculous to me.
"Conor has only been [champion] 11 months since he won that title. There have been many, many examples of fighters waiting 15 months, 18 months before defending it. He's 11 months and they stripped him of it. I thought it was very short-sighted by the UFC how they went about doing it."
McGregor himself has yet to comment on the move but Kavanagh's words make it appear as though he did not voluntarily vacate the featherweight title.
White, however, insists that is not the case and says McGregor was consulted prior to the move.
"He's misinformed," White said of Kavanagh. "Yeah, he doesn't know all that has gone on, I guess. Do you think I just did this? This was Conor's decision."
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