Diaz himself won’t be too badly off either, as he is set to take home $2 million as a result, which is a pretty big improvement on the $500,000 he earned when the two last fought back in March.
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Although UFC President Dana White is lukewarm (at best) on the idea of a third fight between the rivals, as he said after UFC 202, the fighters seem open to the idea.
McGregor’s supporters were mainly made up of J1 students who finished their summer adventures with a blow out trip to Las Vegas to see their homegrown hero come out on top once again. “How can they do that?” he questioned. “What would that do to the division if the guy I KO’d in 13 seconds is the unified champion, so we’ve got a lot to talk about”, McGregor said.
His “Irish army” had travelled from afar to see what they dubbed as the “fight to end all fights”.
“I’m the 145-pound champion. I’m in a lovely, attractive position right now”, McGregor said.
Diaz believes he won the fight, and Shields agrees with him, but unlike some fans who inexplicably argued it was a robbery, Shields knows the fight was way to close to say for sure.
They were supposed to battle again at welterweight at the landmark UFC 200, but that bout was canceled after McGregor announced his retirement and refused to meet with media. Current champ Eddie Alvarez has been lobbying for the fight and it would be a blockbuster whenever and wherever it happens, which leaves the UFC with a host of options, a couple of which they might not like. Dana White also threatened that he will strip McGregor of the UFC featherweight title but the champ is not anxious. “I knew what I had to do this time around and I did it”.
“Then he’d make a little remark and I was like ‘Man!’ At the end, though, you’ve got to respect someone that can tough it out to the end of the fight”. And as much as Alvarez wants to “join the circus”, as he put it in regards to facing the Diaz-McGregor victor, lightweight is flush with established, legitimate threats who have earned a shot at the title and he can easily contend with one of them and re-evaluate from there.
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“We’re definitely not doing this a third time right now”.
