"I wanted to have a battle of attitudes with him. But you know, John's smart. You won't find him anywhere saying he's going to fight me, and he'll never say that publicly. There's no such thing, and there won't be. He doesn't want proof that he agreed to fight me. It's the same reason he didn't want to do a staredown fight, because it promotes a potential fight. When I asked him, 'John, are we going to do it?' he didn't tell me, 'Sure, I'll just get Stipe out of the way and we'll do it.' Instead he said, 'Maybe one day.' He didn't want the quote, 'One day we'll fight.' It was a very smart move."
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Makhachev's coach contradicted White