UFC president Dana White claims that UFC 229 is trending to outsell the promotion’s record selling pay-per-view, UFC 196, by nearly one million buys.

In an appearance on ESPN’s ‘Get Up’ on Thursday morning, ahead of the event’s press conference later that day in New York, White described the meeting between Khabib Nurmagomedov and Conor McGregor as “massive”.

“It’s massive,” White told ESPN. “There has been a lot of talk about this thing doing 2 million buys. We’re trending right now at 2.5 million buys so that’s how big this fight is. The biggest fight we’d ever done was Diaz vs. McGregor at almost 1.6 million pay-per-view buys. Then we did the Floyd Mayweather fight. And now this by far is the biggest fight and one of the biggest fights ever in combat sports to be honest with you.”

Commenting on the relationship between McGregor and the UFC, White insisted that there are “certain things” the promotion has to put up with it when it comes to the unpredictable Irishman.

“Conor works very well with us. We work well with him. There’s certain things you have to deal with Conor McGregor but he’s worth it. For example, the New York thing. The fact he thought he could come here and have this beef with Khabib in the middle of New York City and the way that it was done that was obviously the craziest thing. Normal, typical stuff for Conor is showing up an hour late for press conferences,” he explained.

White also commented on McGregor’s nearly two-year absence from MMA.

“I said this might be the last time you see Conor McGregor when you make his kind of money. He loves to fight. The reality is this — when you make a lot of money when you haven’t had money — you go out and buy a bunch of things, you take care of your family and do some fun stuff but it gets old real quick. It took Conor two years and here we are.”