Ferguson: McGregor turned down fight

Speaking on The MMA Hour, Ferguson says McGregor turned down a fight with him before he was offered his upcoming UFC 223 showdown with Khabib Nurmagomedov.

As far as what they told me in the contract, that’s what they were telling me. They were saying, ‘Look, you’re fighting for the undisputed title.’ That was after they told me I was going to fight Conor McGregor and then just a whole bunch of s*** went down and I was like, you know what, I just got to deal with this. What happened was they offered me a fight with a fighter who didn’t want to fight…I don’t know if it was a contract issue or what it was, the dude doesn’t seem interested to defend his belt against the number one and defending interim lightweight champion. Now I’m the champion because he didn’t want to defend it. Defend or vacate so my campaign actually worked.