The game of chicken between the UFC and Conor McGregor looks to be lasting a bit longer.
About three weeks ago, the company made McGregor an offer to face Dustin Poirier at UFC 257 on Jan. 23, 2021. McGregor responded on Twitter last week, stating he'd accepted the offer, but with the caveat it happens by the end of 2020.
UFC president Dana White spoke to ESPN on Wednesday and made it clear that he's in charge and gave McGregor an ultimatum because the UFC has cards booked for the remainder of the calendar year.
"We offered him a fight, we got him his own date," White told ESPN on Wednesday. "We didn't have a date this year. We have everything laid out for this year, with world champions fighting for titles. He wants to fight Dustin Poirier, apparently, so we went to [broadcast partner] ESPN and got him his date.
"He's been offered Dustin Poirier on Jan. 23. It's a yes or no answer."
The former two-division world champion wants to fight again in 2020. Prior to his stoppage of Donald Cerrone in January, McGregor said that he wanted to compete three times in 2020.
White said there's no room to put McGregor on the dates he was requesting as UFC 255 on Nov. 21 and UFC 256 on Dec. 12 are set. UFC 255 has Deiveson Figueiredo defending the flyweight title against replacement Alex Perez and Valentina Shevchenko putting the women's flyweight belt on the line versus Jennifer Maia. UFC 256 features Amanda Nunes facing Megan Anderson for the women's featherweight championship and bantamweight titleholder Petr Yan taking on Aljamain Sterling.
Even though those cards could use a boost and combat sports' biggest star wants to fight inside the Octagon, White says he has "no clue" why McGregor is insistent on fighting either show as 2020 comes to a close.
"That’s not how it works,” White said when asked why he won't put McGregor on either pay-per-view show “We laid out this year. He was retired. Would anybody disagree he was retired? Through this crazy pandemic year, we’re going through, we faced a lot of challenges. There were a lot of things done to make this thing work. We made it happen.
“We have our schedule laid out. Fighters have committed to it. Fighters have started training for these fights. Conor came back and wants to fight Dustin, so we went out and got him his own date. It’s Jan. 23.”