White: McGregor won't be back before May, UFC will be OK in 2017
Dana White knows a record-breaking 2016 for the UFC will be a tough act to follow, especially with one of his biggest stars out of action for the near future.
But the UFC president isn't sweating the absence of dual-division champion Conor McGregor. After knocking out Eddie Alvarez at UFC 205, "The Notorious" announced that he'd be putting a pause on his fighting career for the next few months to focus on raising a child with his partner, Dee Devlin.
White told Lance Pugmire of the Los Angeles Times that McGregor deserves a break after headlining three massively successful events this year, and that business will be fine without him.
"He won't fight before May," White said. "His girl gets super stressed out when he fights. He doesn't want her having any of that stress while she's pregnant. He's good. He should take time off. He's been fighting nonstop. Nothing wrong with him taking time off. It's good for him and her and it's good for the baby."
McGregor isn't the only star that could be M.I.A. soon. Former women's bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey returns at UFC 207 for what she herself has referred to as one of her last appearances, and Jon Jones, arguably the pound-for-pound best fighter in the world, will be out until next July as he serves a suspension for a USADA violation.
The dearth of star power might seem troubling, but White's experience is helping him block out the naysayers.
"We've done this for 16 years, with a lot of big stars who couldn't fight or moved on - Chuck Liddell, Anderson Silva, Georges St-Pierre," White said. "There's not a day in this office I don't get the question, 'What are we going to do about this guy?' Every day I turn around, I've got a reporter saying we've peaked.
"If I listened to any of that … we probably would be done."