Conor McGregor and Dana White spar over ‘man code’ violations and Pacquiao fight: ‘Stop lying!’

Conor McGregor is once again going off on his own against the UFC’s plans in an attempt to make himself the biggest fight he can. The current top contender? Manny Pacquiao, in a fight that makes a lot of dollars if not sense. The reason McGregor is willing to walk away from the Octagon for the boxing ring again, though, seems to be the UFC’s unwillingness to set him up with a fight, any fight, to continue what he hoped would be a stacked year of bouts.

He kicked 2020 off with a win over Donald Cerrone in January but another match never came together. UFC president Dana White claimed that was the fault of Team McGregor, who allegedly turned down a last minute replacement bout against Tony Ferguson. Since then, McGregor walked away from the UFC again in frustration and back into ‘retirement.’

But leading up to UFC 253, “Notorious” decided to share Instagram messages with White that backed up his claims that he had been working to try and book a fight, any fight, even one against Diego Sanchez. And that the UFC had never offered him anything but a back-up slot for UFC 249’s Khabib vs. Ferguson fight.

The big headlines right now are all about McGregor vs. Pacquiao, but White didn’t want to talk about that. Instead, he focused on McGregor’s breaking of bro code with message sharing during the UFC 253 post-fight press conference.

“Everybody here knows, even the ladies, this is some man code stuff,” a visibly annoyed White said. “It’s just something you don’t do. It’s one of the dirtiest things you can do, because we were just talking about Diego Sanchez. And Diego Sanchez is in there in a private conversation I was having with Conor.”

White made some pretty mild criticism of Sanchez in the messages McGregor shared, stating “We should lose our promoter’s license if we make that fight.”

Considering the tirades the UFC president has gone on against many of his roster during press conferences, it wasn’t exactly anything to get too upset about. But man code is man code.

“When you’re the number two or three-ranked guy in the world, and you’re telling me that you want to fight, but you want to fight unranked, 39-year-old Diego Sanchez in a main event in Los Angeles…” White added during the press conference.

The response and White’s claims he had ‘no idea’ about the Pacquiao fight seems to have further angered McGregor, who lashed out on Twitter.

“Code was broke when you lied about me turning down fights mate,” McGregor said. “I said Justin in May and you went and said I did not want to fight. It’s not about Diego. Diego was a filler to get more fights in. Also you have been involved in Manny talks the legal letters are there. Stop lying.”

Things are certainly getting spicy between White and McGregor, and it seems like Conor is willing to make things public in order to get what he wants. And what is that exactly? At this particular minute, it’s a drubbing at the hands of Manny Pacquiao, whose offensive brawler style isn’t going to generate McGregor the kind of moral victory he earned lasting 10 rounds against Floyd Mayweather.

Will this latest sour exchange between McGregor and White make that bout more or less likely? Only time will tell. Let us know what you think, Maniacs!