Dana White: McGregor is not upset with UFC 223 title fight between Ferguson & Khabib

There’s still some confusion surrounding the upcoming lightweight title fight between Tony Ferguson and Khabib Nurmagomedov at UFC 223, but Dana White says Conor McGregor is cool with the situation.

White, the UFC president, still didn’t reveal whether McGregor would be stripped of his belt but insisted that the UFC must move on with or without its flagship star.

“Is he upset? No, Conor understands,” White told TMZ Sports in a recent interview (h/t Peter Carrol of MMA Fighting). “Conor made a lot of money, he wants some time off, but the division has to go on and the business has to go on.”

McGregor, 29, captured the lightweight strap in 2016 but, instead of defending it, went on to box Floyd Mayweather Jr. in one of the biggest fights in combat sports history at Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena.

McGregor also never got the chance to defend his featherweight title, as the Irishman was stripped of the belt almost immediately after beating Eddie Alvarez to become the promotion’s first-ever simultaneous two-division champion at UFC 205.

White, who traveled with McGregor across three countries and four different cities to promote the 2017 boxing extravaganza with Mayweather, isn’t sure if ‘The Notorious’ will ever return to combat sports but hinted that “anything is possible” when it comes to a rematch against ‘Money’.

“It was August and now it’s September. I say it all the time, when you get that kind of money…Conor might never come back. It’s a lot of money.”

If McGregor does come back, it’s expected that ‘The Notorious’ will fight the winner of UFC 223’s main event between Ferguson and Nurmagomedov. The highly anticipated pay-per-view is scheduled to take place on April 7 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.