Dana White offers Conor McGregor Jan. 23 fight vs. Dustin Poirier

It appears there's no longer any room on the UFC 256 card for Conor McGregor (22-4-0), and evidently the former two-division champion won't fight again in 2020. 

Additionally, McGregor may have to accept a proposal from UFC boss Dana White if he's serious about facing Dustin Poirier (26-6-0) anytime soon. 

ESPN's Brett Okamoto reported on Wednesday that White offered McGregor a chance to fight Poirier but only on Jan. 23, 2021. Because both UFC 255 on Nov. 21 and UFC 256 on Dec. 12 have two title fights on those cards, White does not wish to place the promotion's top pay-per-view draw on either show or rearrange those events at this stage of scheduling. 

Okamoto's story comes less than a week after McGregor, 32, tweeted that he'd accept a bout with Poirier for either of those shows. ESPN previously reported that welterweight champion Kamaru Usman had to withdraw from a planned title defense against Gilbert Burns in the UFC 256 main event because of undisclosed injuries, which, theoretically, created an opening for McGregor. 

However, Okamoto confirmed that White is close to adding a bantamweight title fight between champion Petr Yan (15-1) and challenger Aljamain Sterling (19-3) to UFC 256. 

UFC 256 will also feature two-division champion Amanda Nunes (20-4) defending the featherweight strap against Megan Anderson (11-4-0), a strawweight bout between Mackenzie Dern (9-1-0) and Virna Jandiroba (16-1-0), and Ronaldo "Jacare" Souza (26-8-0) returning to the octagon to battle Marvin Vettori (15-4-1). 

"We laid out this year," White told ESPN about his decision to offer McGregor only the Jan. 23 date. "He was retired. Would anybody disagree he was retired? Through this crazy pandemic year we're going through, we faced a lot of challenges. There were a lot of things done to make this thing work. We made it happen. We have our schedule laid out. Fighters have committed to it. Fighters have started training for these fights. Conor came back and wants to fight Dustin, so we went out and got him his own date. It's Jan. 23."

While McGregor and his camp have repeatedly said throughout 2020 that he's "retired" from MMA, the outspoken Irishman has remained in the United States Anti-Doping Agency mandatory drug-testing program. 

McGregor hasn't fought since he defeated Donald Cerrone in 40 seconds back in January.