Manager: Conor McGregor turned down Justin Gaethje fight ‘at least 5 times’

Conor McGregor vs. Justin Gaethje? It could have happened, or so Gaethje’s manager claims.

Ali Abdelaziz recently appeared on Submission Radio where he discussed a number of topics, including the possibility of a McGregor-Gaethje dream fight that may never happen. According to Abdelaziz, it’s McGregor who has been reluctant to accept the matchup.

“Let’s be real, Conor McGregor will never, will never, will never... he got offered this fight at least five times,” Abdelaziz said (transcription via Denis Shkuratov). “At least five. He never wanted to have to do anything with Justin Gaethje. He said the reason he didn’t want to fight Justin was because Justin talked bad to him on Twitter and Instagram before and the history we have with him. He didn’t want to lose to our team, I guess.”

Gaethje recently told a similar story to TMZ Sports, though he claimed it was actually six times that the McGregor fight was offered and not signed by his adversary. At the time, Gaethje said McGregor couldn’t risk fighting him because “How you lose to me is not how you can lose and continue to be Conor McGregor. That’s a big risk for him and he’s always saying something, trying to take the light away from people fighting in the cage.”

Abdelaziz has a different take on it, alleging that fighters are told not to feud with McGregor on social media if they want to be booked against him.

“The last five, six years we offered Justin Gaethje so many times,” Abdelaziz said. “Never once, never once, this man—Even the UFC, told me this, ‘Hey, leave him alone. Don’t talk with him. He doesn’t like to fight people who talk bad to him on the internet.’ I promise you, he likes to be the one to start the talk and you retaliate.

“Why do you think [Michael] Chandler being so nice to him? Why? Because he was being told not to talk bad to Conor. Conor has to start talking bad and he talk bad back. He’s a weak mental midget. He’s soft like a marshmallow. And he’s a no-good, son of a bitch. This is what he is.”

The history between McGregor and Abdelaziz’s fighters dates back to McGregor’s ugly feud with Khabib Nurmagomedov. When the two fought at UFC 229, Nurmagomedov defeated McGregor by fourth-round submission, but then exited the cage afterwards to initiate a brawl with McGregor’s teammates. McGregor, Nurmagomedov, and several of their associates were fined and suspended as a result of the incident.

Post-fight shenanigans aside, Abdelaziz believes the win was do definitive for Nurmagomedov that the outcome forever changed McGregor.

“It’s been six years since Conor lost his soul to Khabib,” Abdelaziz said. “Khabib took everything away from him. He took his manhood. He took his soul. He was never the same. He will never be the same. He took everything away from this man. This man, every time he look at himself in the mirror, he think about a Dagestani guy who wears a papakha, a wig. This is incredible. He ruined him.

“Khabib said, ‘I’m going to change your face. I’m going to change your mental.’ Remember that? The UFC lost so much money because of Khabib. But this is the game. You have to fight the best and Khabib was the best at the same time and Conor fought the best and he got whooped.”