UFC featherweight champion Conor McGregor is talented, tenacious and talkative. He put the two latter traits to good use in an interview CNBC’s Jane Wells conducted with McGregor and lightweight contender Nate Diaz.
Wells began the interview by telling the two she’ll be talking about money. McGregor immediately began his verbal sparring by saying “I’ll take over from here, Nate. You can bounce.”
Wells asked Diaz how much of his purse from Saturday’s fight he owes to McGregor. Diaz replied: “I don’t owe him [expletive]. He owes me.”
“Anything over forty grand he owes me because that was his last paycheck,” McGregor retorted. “I wipe my [expletive] with that money. I tip that money.”
The video shows a clearly agitated Diaz, who had little time for Wells’s questions nor McGregor’s smack talk, which included the Irishman saying he’ll make well north of $10 million from the fight alone.
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Wells asked Diaz about his financial dreams and at what point he thinks he’s made it in the industry financially.
“I don’t know,” Diaz replied. “Who gives a [expletive]? [expletive] This the money channel?”
The interview ranged from being labeled by UFC president Dana White as “the greatest interview I have ever seen” to Wells calling it “one of my weirdest interviews ever” to UFC’s Twitter account declaring it “the best thing ever.”
https://twitter.com/ufc/status/705867336968843264
McGregor–never short on confidence–added that “the main thing to succeed in this game is to either be me or fight me. Everything else is peanuts.”
Recent history shows there is no love lost between the two combatants.
Before Friday, Diaz wasn’t shy about voicing his opinion of McGregor, saying in February that McGregor and “everybody else” in the UFC was on steroids. In December, Diaz called out McGregor before he had even left the Octagon following a victorious unanimous decision against Michael Johnson.
The two nearly came to blows during Thursday’s UFC 196 press conference when both were on stage to pose for a photo. Diaz posed with both fists raised, with one coming too close to McGregor’s face. McGregor slapped his hand away and White intervened.
Saturday’s bout will surely be entertaining with honest animosity built between them. Well, at least from Diaz’s side.
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