After his extraordinary statement that he released earlier today, after having what felt like the whole of the internet waiting and refreshing his social media pages, many thought that Conor McGregor declaring that he was not retiring and was ready to fight at UFC 200 meant that the fight would go ahead as planned.
But it's not that simple.
Dana White now has a very difficult decision to make, as by allowing Conor to lay off the media obligations in order to train, he is setting a precedent for the future, one which the UFC's marketing team would not be thrilled about. The other option is to pull McGregor from UFC 200 as planned, and according to reports from TMZ.com, that is exactly what is happening.
Their sources (which have been on the money in the past it must be said) have claimed that the UFC offered to re-locate McGregor's training camp to Las Vegas piece by piece, as well as flying each member of his training team out via a private jet, which Conor still refused.
The UFC is officially calling off his fight with Nate Diaz ... a fight that came with a $10 MILLION paycheck, TMZ Sports has learned.
Besides the massive payday, the UFC told Conor it was willing to move mountains to accommodate the fighter during the UFC 200 media tour.
Not only did UFC offer to fly Conor to every destination on a top-of-the-line private jet ... but also offered to ship out every single piece of his gym equipment from Iceland to Vegas for this weekend's media event so there wouldn't be a kink in Conor's training.
We're told McGregor was told his gym would be set up identically to his Iceland training center and it would all be ready to go the second he stepped off the plane.
Still, McGregor refused to budge -- and our sources tell us Conor was "shocked" when he was told the media obligations in Vegas were mandatory.
If true, the proposal of moving the Iceland camp to Vegas seems to be completely missing the point. Conor goes to Iceland to totally immerse himself in his training with no distractions, and to avoid the media. That would be totally pointless if Mjolnir MMA was moved to Las Vegas.
While these reports are still unconfirmed, it is highly possible that Dana White will stand by his decision to pull McGregor, as in allowing him to take a breather in terms of media obligations they are setting a precedent for all of their stars to snub future activities in favour of training.
Should that decision be made, it is not going to be a popular one from Dana, as both fans who want to see McGregor at UFC 200, and fighters who insist that training should come first, are bound to be upset.
We will likely have to wait until Dana White faces the media to find out what's actually happening, but TMZ are sure that it won't involve the Dubliner.
