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Published 16:01 29 Dec 2018 GMT
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McGregor returned to The Octagon in October of this year, after 23 months away from MMA, and he was beaten by Khabib Nurmagomedov at UFC 229. 'The Notorious' has since posted that he wants a rematch but is willing to fight whomever the UFC want him to, in order to get back in the title picture.
In early December, White told MMA Fighting:
"I said the fight that makes sense right now is probably [McGregor versus] Dustin Poirier. And then Tony Ferguson gets a shot at the title and the two winners fight each other."
McGregor has already beaten Poirier (pictured below) so getting motivated for a fight against the American may prove a challenge.
On FOX Sports' Undisputed, White again said Poirier is the best option for McGregor, but he conceded that the Dubliner would have to truly want to put himself through the wringer to be successful again.
"When this guy buckles down and focuses," White told Skip Bayless, "he does amazing things.
"One if the things that screw up fighting, and bands, and all kinds of other things, is a lot of money! This kid has made a lot of money just from fighting. Now he's got his Notorious whiskey and it's doing very well; he's killing it."
On getting the drive back to fight and train hard again, White added: "It's a lot harder to get punched in the face when you make that kind of money."
Getting back to basics and finding that old desire to be the very best, despite past successes is something that John Kavanagh, McGregor's coach, has touched on before.
Weeks after McGregor's loss to Nurmagomedov, Kavanagh told Ariel Helwani:
"Even from a training stand-point, we would have to go... it's kind of funny - and to use a ridiculous analogy - it's a bit like Rocky III. We had this up-and-coming guy and I want to go back and get the eye of the tiger.
"Go back to this old-school gym and just kind of disappear. Get me, Conor, Artem (Lobov) and Peter (Queally) and that kind of crew, and just disappear for three months. And really put in an old-school training camp; a nightmarish training camp.
"If we are going to do it again, that would be my requirement to go ahead and do this again. And I see Conor, from the limited amount of chat we've had, he wants to do that again, and he's very excited to do it again."
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