Donald Cerrone says Conor McGregor won’t sign contract to fight him

There have been rumors of a potential matchup between Conor McGregor and Donald Cerrone for quite some time now, but Cerrone says the reason the fight hasn’t been booked yet is because McGregor won’t sign the contract.

Speaking to MMAjunkie.com Radio, Cerrone confirmed that he’s been close several times to signing a contract to fight McGregor, including a potential matchup back in 2016, when McGregor fought Nate Diaz at UFC 196 on short notice in place of Rafael dos Anjos. Diaz ended up winning that fight by submission and became a superstar in the process, and Cerrone still believes it should have been him who fought McGregor that night.

“(A Conor McGregor matchup) has been so close so many times. The funny thing is, when Diaz fought McGregor, I just fought, and I was flying on that Sunday, and they called me and were like, ‘Hey, do you want the McGregor fight?’ So he turned me down back then, turned me down three or four other times now. It’s crazy to me,” Cerrone said.

When Cerrone beat Alexander Hernandez back at UFC on ESPN 1 in January of this year, he took the mic and once again called McGregor out. At the time, McGregor was still suspended stemming from the UFC 229 incident with Khabib Nurmagomedov, and Cerrone ended up fighting Al Iaquinta in May. After he beat Iaquinta, Cerrone once again called out McGregor, but ended up fighting Tony Ferguson instead at UFC 238.

According to Cerrone, plans were in the works for him to fight Conor McGregor this summer, but he says McGregor is simply refusing to sign on the dotted line to fight him.

“His last fight, we were supposed to do it, and it just deteriorated. I don’t know, he just won’t sign his end of the deal,” Cerrone said.

Do you think Donald Cerrone and Conor McGregor will eventually fight each other, or will this fight never materialize?

This article first appeared on BJPENN.COM on 7/5/2019.