LOS ANGELES — If you were hoping for a world tour to go along with the much-anticipated fight between UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov and megastar Conor McGregor, you’re in for a disappointment.
McGregor, the former UFC lightweight and featherweight champion, helped build his star power through multi-country press events promoting both his featherweight title bout with Jose Aldo, and then, on a much larger scale, his 2017 boxing fight with Floyd Mayweather.
But the grudge match between Nurmagomedov and McGregor goes down in just over two months, to be held at UFC 229 on Oct. 6 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. And with both fighters going straight into their training camps, there simply isn’t a week to spare to send the fighters around the globe.
“We don’t have time for a world tour,” UFC president Dana White said at the UFC 227 post-fight press conference at Staples Center on Saturday night. “These guys are going to fight the first week of October. Both guys are going to go into camp. We’ll do something fun, we’ll do some different stuff. We’re literally having a big meeting on Monday to get this stuff in order and get it going.”
Whatever the company does decide on doing for promotional work, White isn’t worried about having McGregor and Nurmagomedov in the same room together, even after McGregor’s attack on a van containing Nurmagomedov at the UFC 223 media day in New York on April 5.
“We’re pretty confident that we can control what happens,” White said. “What happened in New York, obviously if you look at what happened, everyone was loading onto the buses, everything was done, and our staff still handled it pretty damn well for what was going down.
“We’re very aware. Nothing is going to happen. We’ll be good.”
McGregor (21-3) will compete in a mixed martial arts bout for the first time since he knocked out Eddie Alvarez to win the UFC lightweight title at UFC 205 in November 2016.
Nurmagomedov (26-0) won the vacant title by defeating Al Iaquinta at UFC 223, which ran his UFC record to 10-0.
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