{"id":691955,"date":"2026-05-24T18:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T18:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/691955\/"},"modified":"2026-05-24T18:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T18:24:09","slug":"white-denies-timing-mcgregor-announcement-to-mess-with-ngannou","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/691955\/","title":{"rendered":"White denies timing McGregor announcement to mess with Ngannou"},"content":{"rendered":"

The UFC and Dana White got a lot of heat online when they announced the long-awaited return<\/a> of Conor McGregor at UFC 329 via an Instagram Live video at the exact moment that former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou began his walkout to fight on MVP MMA\u2019s first card.<\/p>\n

Back in the day, the UFC used to counter-program events like MVP MMA ruthlessly. Back in 2008, the UFC booked an Anderson Silva fight<\/a> on SpikeTV for free to counter Affliction MMA\u2019s first big pay-per-view. These days, the promotion doesn\u2019t respect it\u2019s competition enough to bother with such behavior. But it sure seemed like an attempt to suck the oxygen out of Francis Ngannou\u2019s fight that McGregor\u2019s return was announced just as Big Fran made his walk.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot a coincidence, I had a f–king fight here that night,\u201d White told Fred Talks Fighting. \u201cAnyone who thinks I gave a s–t what was going on anywhere else was out of their minds. We announced it as soon as we got it done and we were in the middle of our event.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI could give a f–k what those guys were doing, are you kidding me?\u201d White concluded.<\/p>\n

If the UFC was trying to take some shine off Ngannou\u2019s fight at MVP MMA 1, it didn\u2019t work. If anything, announcing McGregor\u2019s return during a generic Instagram Live announcement from Dana White made the return of \u201cThe Notorious\u201d seem less impactful. Maybe way back in the day when White first started doing Instagram Live announcements, it felt like the ink wasn\u2019t dry on freshly signed contracts and we were getting special news.<\/p>\n

These days? White can\u2019t do the announcements without a printout in front of him, and he still messed up Gable Steveson\u2019s name<\/a> while reading the UFC 329 announcement. Fans wondered why there was no big event trailer \u2026 not even an AI one!<\/a> Nothing from McGregor but a few tweets.<\/a> No presser, no interview on a major outlet. Just a suspiciously timed Instagram Live video.<\/p>\n

If it was at least a petty jab at MVP MMA, at least there\u2019d be some reason to undersell McGregor\u2019s return. As it stands, it\u2019s just more lazy par for the course from the comfortable giant untouchable atop the MMA mountain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The UFC and Dana White got a lot of heat online when they announced the long-awaited return of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":691956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85,1396],"class_list":["post-691955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=691955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/691956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=691955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=691955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=691955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}