MMA Fighting - Reaction: Is Dustin Poirier vs. Conor McGregor 3 Off UFC 264?

Episode Date: April 12, 2021

The Dustin Poirier vs. Conor McGregor 3 bout could be off at UFC 264. After another round of tweets between the two stars Monday, MMA Fighting’s Mike Heck and Alexander K. Lee break down the potential loss of a megafight. Follow Mike Heck: @MikeHeck_JR Follow Alexander K. Lee: @AlexanderKLee Subscribe: http://goo.gl/dYpsgH Check out our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/u8VvLi Visit our playlists: http://goo.gl/eFhsvM Like MMAF on Facebook: http://goo.gl/uhdg7Z Follow on Twitter: http://goo.gl/nOATUI Read More: http://www.mmafighting.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mike Hack here for MMAfighting.com. It a lot has been going on over the last 24 hours or so as it relates to July 10th and the main event for UFC 264. The trilogy fight between Dustin Porre and Connor McGregor, as you may have been noticing over the past few weeks, things have started to get a little more heated between the two fighters on social media since the bout was officially signed. But it really started to turn on Sunday night

when Porre responded to Connor McGregor's prediction of how the fight was going to. end with a kick knockout by McGregor by saying, quote, that's a fun prediction at the notorious MMA. You also predicted a donation to my foundation and you and your team stopped responding after the fight in January. See you soon. July 10th paid in full.

And that led to a lot of people, a lot of fans responding to this information, calling Conner's character into question. Conner's manager, Adi Attaire, responded early this morning that there was a face-to-face meeting in Utah where they were trying to. to actually get the UFC to kick in some more money for the foundation and called it a low move from Porriott to bring this to the public eye. And then Connor McGregor got involved and responded saying, quote, a donation, not a debt. We've been awaiting the plans for the money that never came. I do with all my donations. Know where it's going dot for dot. Otherwise, it goes walking. As is the

case with a lot of these foundations, sadly, you took the McGie over the belt, shows I was right. So Porre continues to say that McGregor's team, quote, ghosted them in getting the donation that was promised. And from there, it got a bit more intense with Connor McGregor saying, quote, you're ripped, you inbred hillbilly. Why do you wink with your ears? You effing brain dead hillbilly, 500K with no plan in place. Ye hang tight. Fool, you must be new to money. The fight is off, by the way.

I'm going to fight someone else on the 10th. Good luck on your old contract kid. Carter then said it's Mardi Gras and also responded once again to Poor Year's accusations about the donations by saying my team does their due diligence to make sure every donation meets the mark

my generosity is known you will pay with your brain for this attempt at smearing my name. Shooting ass shelling ass B I'm going with B little B kicks from a shell good luck when you're caught, you're effed I don't even know what to say

a lot to digest here so joining me in this venture is MMA fightings, Alex K. Lee. What is happening here, A.K., you are the Prince of Positivity. Can you find us some positives in this whole thing? Hello, my friends. Only, I'm going to say it, only an MMA could a charitable donation, a large sum of money going to a good cause, could somehow be turned and twisted into fuel for another fight.

So I don't know. I shouldn't be surprised at this point. We should have known now that fight time is kind of rolling around that this was a possibility. But, you know, and now there's a lot of blame going around. Should Porre have put this out in public? Should, you know, should McGregor's team have been on top of these things? I don't know if we're taking sides here, if we need to take sides. But I will say if, you know, McGregor's beef and if in his team they're beef about, you know,

we want to know where every, you know, due diligence, we want to every dollar spent. That's fine. I actually support that. I do think if you're making this kind of large donation, to charity that you should put the work in. But at the same time, if it's true that Porre's side has been trying to contact him, isn't that the situation where you can respond and get more information? And don't you have ways to get this info if it's so important to you, which it should be,

if we're talking about a half a million dollar donation to a charity? And the other thing is, the other than that kills me, Mike, is I see a lot of McGregor defenders saying that, oh, Porier, you know, again, he shouldn't have, you know, he shouldn't have put this out in public and, you know, again, McGregor's just being smart about it. And I said, well, you know, McGregor didn't seem to care about due diligence. And he didn't seem to have a problem promoting how charitable he was in the lead-up to this fight and mentioning that the donation was made and, you know, retweeting all kinds of positive things

and replying to these comments about how charitable he is. So now suddenly it's a matter of like, well, no, we're not doing it for this reason. So as usual with McGregor and a lot of high-profile fighters, a little bit talking about both sides of his mouth here. So yeah, so that's disappointing, Mike. But again, we're a few months away. I don't know if we want to get to answering this question that we have. This lovely question we have on screen here is the fight actually in jeopardy.

But I suppose it has to be addressed, doesn't it, with McGregor saying that the fight is off. Yeah. And listen, like you just said, there's only a handful of people who know the answer to these questions. so it is not up to us to speculate. Social media can only give us so much information so we don't really know what's happening behind the scenes. But if there's one thing we can say about Connor McGregor

is that he knows how to generate buzz, he knows how to jump on an opportunity, he knows how to sell a fight and create heat on any kind of a situation. So him saying the fight is off, first off, if he signed a contract, not sure what he can do here. He is Connor freaking McGregor. So, you know, he has a lot of power

that a lot of these fighters don't have. But when you see him tweet, AK, that the fight is off, what went through your mind? Well, one of the first things that went through my mind when I saw that tweet was, well, when is the retirement tweet coming? Because I feel like where I would start, I put, I said, here comes a tweet storm, which possibly will culminate him saying, you know what, I've had enough for this game. If this is how, you know, my peers are going to be and this is kind of the crap I have to deal with every time I sign up for a big fight, then I'm done with it.

Thanks for the cheese, et cetera, et cetera. I'll see you guys around. I want another rematch with Floyd. I don't know. Something like that. So that was my first thought. Secondly, I do not think for a second that the fight is off. Though, though it is worth mentioning, this fight has not been officially announced.

I mean, we've reported it that it's signed. Forre has said publicly it's signed. McGregor has said publicly it's signed. Every other out that has done their checks and, you know, check with their sources. So it's essentially official, but it hasn't been announced by the UFC. So if anyone wants to have like any, like the slightest doubt that this might not happen, I guess, but like you said, my contracts are signed. I would like to think, again, that even McGregor couldn't just demand an opponent change in the situation.

It's such a sellable fight for the UFC. I do not think they would want to find another opponent. We've certainly have some suggestions that are already out there. Michael Chandler just tweeted, he said, you know, I can fight. He said, May 15th and July 10th, back to back, let's go. So he plans to beat Charles Oliveira become the champion and then go. right into Tyler Fitton McGregor, which I think is hilarious. And then also fans, a lot of fans, of course, asking,

is it possible that they pull Nate Diaz from the Leon Edwards fight for that trilogy instead? And again, I think both scenarios are unlikely. I do think the fight will go through. So, yeah, I wasn't too concerned when I saw the tweet. I don't, I won't go as far as say this is a calculated, again, attempt to start selling the fight. But I'm sure both guys are aware that whatever trash talk they engage in now is going to be, is going to pay off later. Wouldn't that be like par for the course in the Leon Edward story over the past couple of years

if they pulled Nate and put him in there with Connor? Like that would just be like a cherry on top of the most disgusting Sunday on Earth. I mean, poor Leon just going through like just going through all this stuff. It's wild. And ultimately, AK, and I was just, and I know you sort of alluded to this. And I was just talking to Wonder Boy Thompson about this because I got literally hit like his live reaction to all this. because he had no idea what was happening. Of course, he's fighting Gilbert Burns on that same card,

and you'll hear that interview on what the heck tomorrow, but he feels like cooler heads, okay, cooler heads may not prevail entirely, but they'll be cool enough to where this fight will happen on July 10th. And so I'm curious, like, where we sit right now, do you agree with Wonderboy that when the dust finally settles here? Because, you know, we're approaching some dangerous territory. We're calling character into question.

we're talking about donations, we're talking about promises, like big things that factored into the first fight in a positive way, are you confident that this fight happens on July 10th, that we see the trilogy play out on July 10th? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm fairly confident. If I were a betting man, I'd go like 80, 20. You know, I was having 80% chance it happens.

I do find it, I do think that him and his management need to get on the same page for anyone kind of keeping up with this drama in real time. McGregor's agent, Adi Atar, also responded to Porre's comments first, as you said, again, kind of mentioning that they met in person. And then later, excuse me, responding to another commenter on Twitter who was like, who just, who had two questions. Like, okay, so is it just about you guys doing your due diligence? And two, is the donation still going to go through? And Atar's response was very flatly, yes and yes. And that was before, that response was before McGregor's kind of fiery volley shot off later.

I do think they need to get in the same page with that. I think we've got two heads here of the same, of the same, you know, beasts that are kind of handling the situation differently. I'm not saying that just, I'm not saying their stories contradict each other, but clearly they're not, they haven't maybe spoken about how to handle this publicly. I'm not even sure you can't control Humberghaker handles things publicly, but this maybe was not the best way to do it. But look, it's drawing headlines, drawing a lot of, drawing a lot of attention. Again, to a fight that I don't, I think it's a pretty big fight already. any feel you can add to the fire, I guess is always great. But yeah, I think it'll happen.

Like I said, contracts are signed. We've seen stranger things happen. Certainly, you know, contract signed the UFC does not guarantee anything necessarily. But in this case, I think when we're talking about this, just high profile, unless there's an injury or, again, some other reason for a guy to withdraw. I would like to think the UFC would not allow, you know, anyone to just say, ah, I don't want to fight this guy anymore. So, yeah, strongly feel this fight still goes down. So people, don't worry. Get your tickets or your, you know, people of your buy as in the head for you.

2064. As one of the newest electees to the WWE Hall of Fame, Eric Bischoff has said and very famously said, controversy creates cash, AK. So last thing, over under, let's just say positivity, positive things are going to happen. Everything is going to go down July 10th. UFC 264. Over under 1.5 million pay-per-view buys for this fight with all things we just learned today. How did two, how did two, 57 do we do we did we get do we did we get a decent estimate on that it was definitely i i would think it did over a million sure yeah okay yeah right i'm seeing reported 1.6 okay so 1.6 billion so the first so i'm changing one 1.8 1.8 well i was going to say you don't necessarily have to change it because it's possible that there's diminishing returns right there's no guarantee you would you would

assume that a trilogy would do better but it's not guaranteed and again i don't know if this donation talk helps it or not because it's i think it's little silly and I think it most makes I don't want to say both guys I don't think I honestly don't think poor A looks that bad for airing out in public uh I think it makes McGregor really bad but maybe that's the McGregor that people like if we're going with though with a one point eight number I think it's a little too high I'm going to go I'm going to go it it beats two 57 but just by a bit just by a bit maybe again between 1.6 1.7 billion a billion oh they would love that so those are one championship numbers uh between 1.6 and 1.7 million I don't think it quite

cracks 1.8 and where it gets close to tubing. Well, it is a wild Monday indeed in the world of mixed martial arts. So keep it here at mhmapfiting.com for the latest on this developing story for Alex Kaley. I am Mike Heck. Thank you for watching. On the road to UFC 264 on July 10th,

will we see the trilogy between Dustin Porre and Connor McGregor? You're listening to the Vox Media Podcast Network. Thank you.