When Max Holloway had to pull out of his upcoming bout with Frankie Edgar at UFC222, many fighters put their name in the ring to step in. Four days ago Conor McGregor revealed in an Instagram post that he was one of those fighters that offered to step in at short notice:
I put my name forward to step in at UFC 222 to face Frankie Edgar when Max Holloway pulled out, but I was told there wasn't enough time to generate the money that the UFC would need.
Frankie Edgar, the man that McGregor would have fought spoke about McGregor's claims on the MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani. Helwani pressed Edgar about the rumoured 165lbs title that McGregor was reported to want to fight for Edgar confirmed his suspicions:
I mean, come on, there is no 165-pound belt. You know what I’m saying? I want to fight on the moon. You know what I mean? Come on.
He doesn’t want to defend his own belt. What, he wants to fight me? I mean, hey, that’d be great. That’d be great for me. Let’s be real. I’m not scared to fight anybody. Come on, I’ve been doing too long to be scared to fight anybody. I mean, if anything, that would be very good for me, to fight Conor McGregor.
I would’ve fought him in any weight class, to be honest with you.
Edgar went on to say that he was sceptical as to McGregor's claims and told Helwani that if there was any truth in the rumours that UCF chief Dana White would've called him personally.
However, McGregor's team mate Artem Lobov reiterated that Conor was seriously close to signing to fight the American and like McGregor himself, blamed the lack of promotion time as the reason the match was not made:
It was real, 100 percent. Conor was ready to go, we were gathering the troops already, we were ready to go.
We were planning what we were going to do; we were just going to fly out to Vegas straightaway to do a short little camp. Plans were in place and everything — everything was ready to go.
Conor wanted to fight. I was talking to him the whole time and he was ready to go and show the world what he can do.
To the best of my knowledge, UFC weren’t really all for it because it was really short notice and it wouldn’t give enough time to build the fight. From what I heard, that was the main reason for it.
"It was real, 100 percent. Conor was ready to go, that was it." –@RusHammerMMA on alleged 165-pound title fight between Conor McGregor and Frankie Edgar. Watch #TheMMAHour live: https://t.co/11sYrEm5Ugpic.twitter.com/myAgKBk1wD
— MMAFighting.com (@MMAFighting) February 26, 2018
Dana White spoke to TMZ recently on when he thought McGregor would be back in the octagon, the UFC boss was hesitant, mentioning August and September as possible return dates but also speculated that with the amount of money that McGregor has made over his career, that 'the Notorious' never fight again.
