Dana White says Conor McGregor vs. Khabib Nurmagomedov fight won’t happen in Russia

One of the biggest possible fights in MMA at present is a showdown between new UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov, and troubled former champion Conor McGregor.

When considering possible settings for this fight, one of the most compelling options is Moscow, in Nurmagomedov’s native Russia. This is a territory the UFC has not yet ventured into, and one McGregor and his team have previously expressed interest in exploring themselves.

“Conor’s a mad thing,” McGregor’s striking coach Owen Roddy said on a recent episode of the BBC MMA Show. “Conor turned around to me just after the [Floyd] Mayweather fight and said, ‘There’s talk of me fighting Khabib. I might do it in Russia.’ Then he says to me, ‘We’ll do it like Rocky. We’ll go to Siberia and we’ll train in the snow. I’ll get one of those yokes to put on my shoulders to get the lats’. I was crying with laughter. He was serious. Dead serious. Conor does mad things. That’s what we love him for. There’s not many people who would do that.”

According to UFC President Dana White, however, this potential Khabib Nurmagomedov vs. Conor McGregor fight will not happen in Russia. While White expects the champ Nurmagomedov to compete in his homeland in the future, he thinks this Nurmagomedov vs. McGregor matchup is simply too big to happen anywhere other than Las Vegas.

“No,” White said decisively when asked by TMZ whether McGregor and Nurmagomedov would fight in Moscow. “If you’ve do a fight that big, you’ve got to do it in Vegas. Khabib will fight in Russia at some point, but it won’t be that fight. [That fight] is too big. You’ve got to do it in Vegas.”

Do you think Khabib Nurmagomedov and Conor McGregor will end up fighting? If so, where do you think the fight will occur?

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 4/30/2018.