The Conor McGregor Retirement Rumor Is False, But He Still Isn’t Happy With The UFC


The Conor McGregor retirement tweets are just a joke. He was trying to fool the UFC. They annoyed Conor McGregor. Retirement was a passive aggressive threat to UFC head Dana White. McGregor was getting fed up with the demands on his time to promote his upcoming fight. In any case, the UFC isn’t taking chances and have already pulled him from UFC 200. After sending out tweets on Twitter that he would retire, McGregor clarified the issue via Facebook. Really, all he wants is time to train, and feels he cannot focus on that with all the media promotion he is forced to do.

Conor is hungry for revenge. He is not willing to lose another fight, and sees promotional duties as an obstacle in his path. Conor wanted to be prepared by UFC 200 for victory, and take back some of the glitter from his previously undefeated UFC record. He may not get that chance now. Though it is still not confirmed, rumor has it that the UFC has already removed Conor from any matches at UFC 200. If true, that should leave Conor with even more time to prepare for his next fight, but waiting that long might affect his career, as Nate Diaz becomes the new object of interest in men’s MMA.

The Guardian posted an excerpt of McGregor’s Facebook rant, where he explained the frustrations he feels with all of those press obligations leading up to a fight.

“Fifty 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.”

Conor is trying to keep the momentum that led to his popularity. He feels the promotional obligations are dragging him down. McGregor has a point, since a losing fighter, a fighter distracted from training, a fighter not focused on the actual fight itself, is not a fighter that can maintain popularity for long. If the media frenzy causes Conor to lose another fight, then he really won’t have to worry about promotional duties, as he won’t be put on the fight card. It’s possible that he’s just really frustrated with losing that last match, and is going to be particularly uptight about any demands the UFC has.

As Yahoo! Sports reported, McGregor didn’t say he wants nothing to do with fight promotion. He would still attend some larger scale promotional activities. But Conor also feels that there are too many overall, as well as too many unimportant smaller scale ones that he is obligated to attend. McGregor feels his fights are definitely going to bring in an audience, and so doesn’t see the logic behind still having to do general promotional duties at this stage in his career. His comments have provoked support from other fighters, and it’s forcing the UFC to make decisions that other fighters are taking note of. McGregor’s demands could influence larger changes.

Though Conor McGregor will not retire at 27, his career is likely to shift. The retirement tweet was likely a scam to get the UFC to give him the leeway he asked for. If things become tense between the UFC and McGregor, both parties will have to realize that they depend on each other for survival, and so compromise. McGregor’s demands seem reasonable if you consider that his relevance as a fighter is on the line. But if the UFC eases promotional demands with McGregor, it might have to alter those duties for other fighters who request more time to train. But the Conor McGregor retirement shenanigans have forced the UFC to give the issue more thought.

[Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images]

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