MMA fighter Conor McGregor definitively answered the question of whether or not he was truly retiring on Thursday morning. Following a tweet posted Tuesday, in which he claimed he was done with fighting, there has been plenty of speculation over what was behind the move.
Was McGregor joking? Was this a power play with UFC president Dana White?
I am just trying to do my job and fight here. I get paid to fight … https://t.co/xW1P3G2710
— Conor McGregor (@TheNotoriousMMA) April 21, 2016
The UFC featherweight champ promised to make a statement concerning the matter, and he most certainly stated something on his Facebook page. The gist of it: McGregor is not retiring. And he’s really, really not interested in endlessly promoting his next fight. That’s someone else’s job. He’s got training to do.
“There comes a time when you need to stop handing out flyers and get back to the damn shop.
50 world tours, 200 press conferences, 1 million interviews, 2 million photo shoots, and at the end of it all I’m left looking down the barrel of a lens, staring defeat in the face, thinking of nothing but my incorrect fight preparation. And the many distractions that led to this.
Nothing else was going through my mind.
It is time to go back and live the life that got me this life.
Sitting in a car on the way to some dump in Conneticut or somewhere, to speak to Tim and Suzie on the nobody gives a fuck morning show did not get me this life.”
Hey, some of us like the nobody gives a fuck morning show. It makes getting ready for work and the morning commute go by easier. But maybe it’s not to McGregor’s taste. More music, less talk. Or in this case, more training, more fighting, less talk.
UFC president announced that McGregor had been pulled from the card of UFC 200 on July 9 because he was failing to fulfill his promotional obligations for the event — most notably, attending a press conference on Friday to promote the event. Furthermore, if McGregor didn’t want to fight, White said he needed to vacate his title.
. @UFC Prez @DanaWhite explains why he pulled @TheNotoriousMMA off #UFC200 and why there's no chance it will change. https://t.co/PgP50GMVBm
— FOX Sports: UFC (@UFCONFOX) April 21, 2016
“Friday is not the first day of promotion,” White said during an appearance on Fox Sports 1 (via Yahoo Sports). “All of the fighters are here right now. Ten million dollars is going to be spent on promotion and the commercial alone is going to cost $1 million. He’s already missing stuff so the window is pretty much closed.”
That $10 million figure apparently didn’t impress McGregor too much. Or at the very least, he feels the other fighters on the card need to pull their own weight when it comes to the UFC’s promotional machinery. Especially Nate Diaz, whom McGregor is scheduled to fight.
“There had been 10 million dollars allocated for the promotion of this event is what they told me.
So as a gesture of good will, I went and not only saved that 10 million dollars in promotion money, I then went and tripled it for them.
And all with one tweet.
Keep that 10 mill to promote the other bums that need it. My shows are good.
I must isolate myself now.
I am facing a taller, longer and heavier man. I need to prepare correctly this time.
I can not dance for you this time.
It is time for the other monkeys to dance. I’ve danced us all the way here.
Nate’s little mush head looks good up on that stage these days. Stuff him in front of the camera for it.”
Despite his unwillingness to promote the event and preference to focus on his training, McGregor said he still wants to fight at UFC 200. But how will this standoff with White end up? Is McGregor essentially bigger than the sport now, or at least big enough where he can call his own shot? If his fellow UFC fighters take up the promotional burden, perhaps they can take some of that spotlight. McGregor apparently wouldn’t have a problem with that. Especially if beating Diaz at UFC 200 maintains his status as one of the sport’s most popular combatants.
