Former two division UFC champion Conor McGregor is challenging UFC Lightweight Champion Khabib Nurmagomedov for the gold in the main event of UFC 229.
There hasn’t exactly been a ton of media events or press conferences leading up to the encounter and that may be the fault of the Irishman.
According to a report from Dave Meltzer, it appears that McGregor doesn’t want to do much media heading into the event and the UFC isn’t very happy about that.
“One of the reasons you haven’t seen much in the way of interviews and such is that McGregor has not agreed to do anything. There are no press conferences scheduled because McGregor at this point hasn’t agreed to them. There is a lot of frustration within the UFC about McGregor’s attitude, but in the end, he’s got the leverage and the ticket sales and secondary market results only give him more leverage. The feeling is that this may be the biggest non-boxing PPV of all-time, and the only reason it wouldn’t be is that McGregor hasn’t been pushing it hard. McGregor was able to get a larger piece of the action for this fight than any of his UFC fights to date, so there is a direct correlation more than ever between his work in promoting the fight and his pocket book, but this may also show that he knows he’s in a real fight and doesn’t want to break training,” says Meltzer.
This is not the first time the UFC has dealt with a big star refusing to due media, as WWE Raw Women’s Champion Ronda Rousey didn’t do any interviews or press conferences in the lead up to UFC 207.
UFC 229 takes place on Saturday, October 6 from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada with Khabib Nurmagomedov and Conor McGregor headlining. Fightful is providing live coverage of the event, with a post-show podcast to follow.
