Dana White says it isn’t ‘necessarily’ Nate Diaz putting the brakes on Conor McGregor rematch

On Thursday, UFC President Dana White was a guest on Colin Cowherd’s “The Herd” to talk about the latest news regarding the UFC.

One of the topics was about the frustration White has had in putting the rematch together for the Nate Diaz vs. Conor McGregor rematch, with the bulk of the frustration coming from the negotiations on Diaz’s terms for the fight when they had lunch in Stockton two weeks ago.

“It wasn’t necessarily as much Nate Diaz as it was the management, but yeah, I did,” Said white (transcribed by MMA Fighting). “And the problem is — what drives me crazy is when you have a contract. Everybody sits down at one point and we do a deal. Everybody is happy. You shake hands, you hug. And then we move onto the next fight and everybody wants to blow up the deal.”

White says that they already have a deal in place after both Diaz and McGregor agreed to fight at UFC 200.

“What you try to do in a deal like this is you try to be as fair as you can be, and obviously the problem is that we have a deal,” White said. “We already have a deal. [Diaz] has a contract.

“Conor has a deal. It’s not like we went in and renegotiated. This was a big myth coming out of that fight. Conor McGregor has never, ever — not only does he step up and take big fights last minute, moved up however many pounds to fight Nate and was willing to fight anybody; that’s why people love Conor, because Conor will fight anybody, anywhere, anytime — he has never come back and tried to renegotiate a contract, ever. Ever.

“So that was a big myth that he was doing that. Nate, we signed a new deal going into that fight, then he signed the contract for UFC 200. So then Conor doesn’t show up for UFC 200, and now Nate is trying to blow up the deal. It’s just frustrating. But listen, that’s the business we’re in. This is what we do. Everybody is not going to be happy all the time. It’s part of the deal, so now our job is, Lorenzo (Fertitta) and I have to sit down and try to figure out how to make this deal work.”

White said that time is their enemy in the negotiations as he already finished making the UFC card that comes after the one they are proposing to have Diaz and McGregor on in August. White said that if Conor wants to fight in August, it will have to be another opponent unless Diaz accepts.