Conor McGregor (photo via UFC)

By FCF Staff

Former UFC champion Rich Franklins says the UFC had no choice but to maintain its position, and keep Conor McGregor off UFC 200, following his highly publicized rift with the promotion.

The UFC elected to pull McGregor from his July 9th, rematch with Nate Diaz, when the superstar refused to attend all of the promotional appearances the company planned. McGregor publicly argued that it was the UFC’s “move”, in an effort to pressure the promotion and get reinstated on the card. UFC officials, however, elected to proceed without the match-up.

Recently Franklin spoke ESPN.com, and while discussing the McGregor situation, the ONE Championship exec stated:

“Obviously, there are certain media days you have to attend, but we live in a social media age where there are creative ways to do things. I’ve been on those media tours where you’re flying from city to city and it’s not easy and it can derail your training. You just have to creatively think of doing things in ways that minimize the amount of time he has to spent out of camp. There has to be flexibility. Now, I don’t know the terms of Conor’s contract and I don’t know the conversations that were had but if I, as a promoter, had an agreement with a fighter to do a certain set of media and as the fighter got to thinking about it and said, “I don’t want to disrupt my camp,” then we’d have an issue. The way Conor went about it, basically announcing his retirement — once the UFC pulled him and made that statement as the promoter, it’s kind of like disciplining a child. Once you’ve made a statement, consistency is probably the most important thing.”

Since McGregor was pulled from UFC 200, UFC President Dana White has said that the fighter could compete as early as UFC 201 in August.