it was a lie. at that time Conor could literally ask for any fight he wanted. he didn't fight Khabib until 3 years after he fought Aldo. in that time frame he fought Nate twice, Eddie for the title AND Mayweather in an unprecedented event that only he has been able to pull off so far. all fights he asked for by name. if he really wanted to give Aldo the rematch he could've easily.
not only that the 1st Nate fight was bad business, even Dana knew that which is why he was so hesitant to allow it to happen even though he eventually did.
You're losing me and you're actually factually incorrect here.
- Conor beat Aldo in December 2015.
- Conor was going to fight RDA for the lightweight title in march of 2016 just a few months later
- Obviously he's going to go for champ champ status instead of an immediate rematch with Aldo. This is an easy money decision. The rematch was still live at this point.
- RDA pulled out on February 23rd 2016 and Aldo
was offered the rematch with Conor for March 5th 2016 but declined because of lack of time to prepare
- Instead, Aldo went on to fight in July of 2016 and beat Edgar
- McGregor loses to Diaz in March, then rematched Diaz in August (a month after Aldo fought) and won and put up huge numbers
- Then less than 3 months later he beat Mendes for the title while Aldo didn't fight for another year since the Edgar fight and lost.
Sorry, but the timing just has another way more logical explanation than "Conor told a lie" revisionist history. Aldo was offered the rematch, declined it, and Conor went on to bigger and better things / accomplishments / numbers and Aldo's career went off a cliff.
By the time Conor was fighting Floyd for $130,000,000, Aldo was losing to Edgar and Conor was never looking back at featherweight. Sorry but Aldo missed the train by not taking the fight Diaz did. He was offered the fight he wanted and said no. Sucks, but that was his chance. Conor losing to Diaz changed the course of history significantly.