By Dane McGuire
After Justin Gaethje’s BMF-title-winning head kick KO of Dustin Poirier, megastar Conor McGregor shared his reaction on Twitter. The Irishman called for a scrap which Gaethje was more than happy to say no to–sort of.
McGregor tweeted, “Justin, I’ll slap you around…I’m the real bmf, he can fight for pennies if he wants but I want spirits, I call the shots, I’m in it to launch shots, fuck chandler, you want it call for it.”
McGregor is slated to face Michael Chandler after the current season of The Ultimate Fighter but there is no timetable for the fight as of yet. McGregor recently missed a deadline to re-enter the USADA testing pool. Fighters must have been in the testing pool for six months before competing.
Gaethje said of a McGregor fight, “I think he’s turned me down six times,” Gaethje said at the post-event press conference for Saturday’s pay-per-view. “And usually, you have to lose to fight him, so don’t know what’s going on.”
There has been trash talk between the two in the media before, but for now, ‘The Highlight’ seems apathetic.
“Because I don’t care,” Gaethje said when asked why he wasn’t jumping at a McGregor callout. “Whatever. I fight MMA, I like to fight big fights, I like exciting things, so it sounds pretty exciting to me.
He then was very candid about what he thought of the McGregor-USADA situation. McGregor has bulked up quite a bit, leading to much speculation of PED usage.
“I’m not going to fight someone on steroids. I’ve never taken steroids in my life, never will – well, maybe when I retire, I might. But I’ve never taken steroids, and I don’t want to fight someone that’s cheating. And I probably shouldn’t even say that if I want the fight, but it’s the truth.”
For the time being, it’s being speculated Gaethje faces the winner of Islam Makhachev and Charles Oliveira. That fight is slated for October’s UFC 294 pay-per-view event.
“You know what I want to do next,” Gaethje said in his immediate post-fight interview. “I want to fight for the world championship. These guys are fighting in October. I’m going to prove I’m the best in the world.”
“I’d prefer Charles, because he beat me,” Gaethje added later. “I’m a competitor. This chance at redemption was amazing. It drove me to work harder, to be ready more, but they’re the best in the world, and I want to fight the best in the world.”