Donald "Cowboy" Cerrone blames media for stirring up "non-existent" feud with Conor McGregor

Donald "Cowboy" Cerrone has been calling for a fight against Conor McGregor for a while now. At the start of 2019, he called out McGregor after finishing Alex Hernandez and the Irishman even praised his performance, telling him that he would fight him just for that.

However, it took a while for things to come about. Cerrone began gaining momentum and was edging close to a title shot, but defeats to top Lightweight contenders Tony Ferguson and Justin Gaethje put him in the back of the line. Despite that, he got the fight that he wanted and is just over a week away from it.

The big surprise is that there was no bad blood between the two men and Conor McGregor, who is usually brash and outspoken - has been very levelheaded and respectful towards his opponent Cerrone.

Cerrone vehemently denied having a feud against Conor McGregor, telling MMA Fighting that it's the media trying to stir things up:

“That’s just you media boys digging and shoveling for sh*t to bring up,” Cerrone told MMA Fighting. “That’s all that was. Conor hasn’t said anything bad about me so you’ve got to go get old sh*t out.”

Cerrone said that McGregor is the best at trash talk and that the only way he'd get mad is if he hit him with a verbal "low blow"

“He’s the best at it. He is the best,” Cerrone said of McGregor’s trash talk. “The thing is you’d really have to go low, talk about my grandma or my kid and then it would put it on another level. "

With that said, he doesn't see it being a grudge rivalry with bad blood:

“I don’t think it’s ever going to go that way. He understands that. We’re fighting, he can talk about that all he wants but don’t low blow.”

With just over a week to go, it doesn't appear as though there's going to be much of a rivalry between the two men other than a competitive one. It's certainly a fresh change for McGregor as his last fight against Khabib Nurmagomedov was purely sold on the hatred between the two men.