Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) President Dana White has added fuel to the fire on the Conor McGregor-Paulie Malignaggi sparring fiasco.
On Aug. 26, McGregor will take on Floyd Mayweather inside the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. To help with preparation, Malignaggi had two sparring sessions with “Notorious.” Some leaked photos of the sessions caused the “Magic Man” to leave McGregor’s camp early.
When challenged to post sparring footage, White showed two clips. One of them appears to be McGregor knocking Malignaggi down. Malignaggi says it was a push.
Speaking to the media, White said he doesn’t have beef with Malignaggi (via MMAJunkie.com):
“I have nothing against Paulie. I don’t even know the guy. I don’t know him. But you know me, man. When you start talking (expletive) – (with) how I get – I actually felt bad for the guy. I actually felt bad for him.”
He then claimed that Showtime was offered the footage to air, but they refused.
“The last thing I want to do is get in a beef with Showtime, but we gave them a ton of the footage of the (Malignaggi vs. McGregor) sparring, and they denied it – because they didn’t want to make Paulie look bad. They had a ton of the sparring footage, and they wanted to use zero (of it).”
