This card ain’t big enough for the two of us.
Daniel Cormier versus Jon Jones can’t happen on the same bill as Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz. There’s just not enough to go around.
The light heavyweight champion spoke with Ariel Helwani on the MMA Hour about the possibility of fighting at UFC 200 but his answer was simple: it could only happen if Conor McGregor was definitely pulled from the event.
“People are going to have to choose, honestly,” he said. “If they want Conor on that card, they’re probably going to lose Jon [Jones] and I, so it’s going to be one or the other because I don’t think they would do it with all of us on the same card.
“I just don’t know if the pie is big enough to share.”
The back and forth – or apparent lack of – between Conor McGregor and the UFC isn’t something that the American holds against the Dubliner though.
He understands what McGregor is thinking – especially off the back of a loss – and he has sympathy for the featherweight champion.
“There’s a part of me that really does sympathise with Conor. He said it himself: ‘I just lost to this guy. This guy’s longer. This guy’s bigger. We’re fighting at the same weight division. I need to train.’ It makes a tonne of sense.
“But we’ve all felt that way before in our careers where, ‘I just want to train, I don’t want to go do media. I don’t want to do this interview.’
“But, also, Conor does a lot more than the rest of us so you would think, in this instance, maybe he gets a little more leeway than anyone else would get.”
REPORT: Dana White firmly denies Conor McGregor's claim that he's fighting on #UFC200 https://t.co/lua4nCdApD
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) April 25, 2016
Apparently not.
“With that being said, it’s the biggest show ever, you’re the biggest star, we need you to do your job,” Cormier said.
“I can see both sides. I will not say Conor’s wrong because he’s not 100 per cent wrong. But I cannot say that the organisation is 100 per cent wrong because I don’t feel they are either.
“‘We do need you to do this Conor, even though you’ve done so much already, we get it. We need you to do this because it’s so big to the company.'”
Cormier especially gets where McGregor is coming from though because he feels that The Notorious is facing an impossible task.
A second round submission was enough for Nate Diaz to take the fight in March and Cormier reckons it will be the same again – which is a reality that doesn’t bode well for McGregor’s future in the UFC.
“I do sympathise with him because he does have an uphill battle. If he loses to this guy again… I love Nate Diaz, but he’s lost 10 times.
“We’re not talking about Rafael dos Anjos, we’re not talking about the champions – Conor can’t lose to Nate over and over again and, honestly, I don’t know if he can actually beat him. It’s just a bad style match-up for him.”
