Conor McGregor released a statement Thursday assuring fans he wasn't retired from mixed martial arts, no matter what a cryptic tweet Tuesday implied.
He explained why he refused to fly to Las Vegas and do promotional work for July's historic UFC 200, an act of insubordination that caused the UFC to pull him from the headlining rematch with Nate Diaz, who defeated him in March.
"I am just trying to do my job and fight here," McGregor wrote on Facebook. "I am paid to fight. I am not yet paid to promote. I have become lost in the game of promotion and forgot about the art of fighting. There comes a time when you need to stop handing out flyers and get back to the damn shop."
There may not be a better promoter than McGregor in sports today and in many ways this might be his finest bit of PR to date. Not paid to promote? Oh, McGregor knows better that. He's made his millions in part because he promotes.
Thursday may have been his crowning achievement in that pursuit though. He won not just the court of public opinion but possibly forced the UFC to put him back on the card. Critics have called Conor McGregor a lot of names but dumb has never been one of them.
His retired/not retired act actually generated more interest in him, UFC 200 and his chance at reversing a defeat to Diaz than anything he could have said or done in front of the cameras this weekend. (His cryptic tweet was retweeted 170,000 times.)
And then in one social media post he managed to assert his single-minded focus on his craft and remind everyone of the stakes and danger of facing the bigger, stronger Diaz again, all while painting UFC management into a corner of frivolous marketing and lack of respect for fighting.
"I need to focus on me now," McGregor wrote. "I'm coming for my revenge here …"
And then:
"I will always play the [promotional] game and play it better than anybody, but just for this one, where I am coming off a loss, I asked for some leeway where I can just train and focus. I did not shut down all media requests. I simply wanted a slight adjustment.
"But it was denied …"
And then:
"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."
Have Herb Dean stop the fight, it's all over, knockout via Facebook post.
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His days on the dole in Dublin, before he became a UFC star and multi-millionaire, seemed to shape everything Conor McGregor would become, obsessed with being noticed, obsessed with exerting his power, obsessed, of course, with money.
Welfare can sustain a man in the toughest of times. It also can demand repayment, often in self-worth.
In Ireland you often need to stand in an actual line to get your money, down at the post office or welfare department, in the so-called dole queue. You have to show your ID, show proof of joblessness, show your face to whoever walks by.
"That can drain a man's mind," McGregor told Breitbart Sports last year.
His poverty was not merely one of youth, one that could be shrugged off as the circumstance of family or life. McGregor was receiving benefits as recently as a month before his UFC debut. That was 2013. He was 24. He was a grown man, his own man, and still there he was. He'd given up part time work as a plumber to concentrate on MMA, but to how many people seeing him rely on the government was that just some pipe dream? Sure, sure, future champion of the world.
"I never forget," McGregor said.
With McGregor you always wondered whether he talked so much because he believed in the bull he was spewing, or because he was precisely aware that it was all façade, that the inevitable end was coming, perhaps quickly, so he better grab every last dollar, every last drop of fame as fast and as furious as possible.
What's clear is that McGregor's habit of barreling headlong into danger, pedal to the metal, concerned with little less than securing the highest-paying fights possible and then via trash talk and antics raising it from there, may be over.
And that may be just in time.
The labor output of MMA is, theoretically, the same. You climb in a cage and fight.
The compensation varies dramatically, however, via sheer force of personality. Why not make as much as possible by talking the most smack, by being outlandish, by naming yourself Notorious and then acting on it, by calling yourself Mystic Mac and pretending you controlled the fate in front of you and by concentrating on spectacular knockouts, not mundane takedown defense?
This was McGregor running further and further from that dole queue. Why would he do it any other way?
Last December he dropped Jose Aldo with one punch, handing the Brazilian great his first loss in a decade. It was the greatest night of McGregor's career.
He opened his post-fight press conference talking about money.
"Tonight was a phenomenal night, $10.1 million gate, the highest pay per view of the year," he said, seemingly taking the role of UFC president Dana White. "We've done it again."
He brought up Floyd Mayweather, brought up Manny Pacquiao, asked what the gate was for their big fight in the same MGM Grand Garden. Seventy-two million he was told, not even in the same ballpark. He was, as always, undeterred.
"I'm catching up," he said. "Those old [expletives] were 40 when they got that on. I'm only warming up … 27 years of age, anything can happen."
So still at 27, just five months later, he was going to give it all up? No more catching up on Mayweather?
No way. It's why no one believed it.
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What changed though may have been the realization that his way was fraught with so much peril. He could channel Mayweather's crass, cash-obsessed act, which allowed a light punching, defensive fighter to become the biggest draw in boxing.
This is the UFC though, not boxing.
They all lose. They can't hide. Mayweather could manage every opponent, not just who but, more importantly, when. It doesn't work that way in the UFC, so McGregor went the opposite route, begging for the biggest fight every single time, then promising (and delivering) on making it even bigger.
In December he won at 145 pounds and then demanded to fight Rafael dos Anjos at 155 in March because it would pay more than simply just staying back at 145. It was daring, although in classic sell-the-fight-McGregor-style, he promised to not just defeat dos Anjos but rip his head off and then drag it through the streets of Rio to cheering crowds because, the Irishman claimed, dos Anjos wasn't an authentic enough Brazilian, whatever that meant.
Only dos Anjos got hurt two weeks before the fight and rather than take the long play and fight someone easy, McGregor recklessly chased the biggest payday available – Nate Diaz, at 170 pounds no less, a full 25 more than he fought Aldo at in December.
McGregor was like a guy who played dice by betting boxcars every single roll.
The rub was that Diaz had no time to train for the fight. No time to spar. No time to get full conditioning work in. No time to really study. For McGregor, it was a chance to thrill at 170 then drop back down even richer and more powerful than ever.
Except no matter how many times he clocked Diaz he couldn't fell the bigger man. Diaz grew blooded, but never in real trouble.
"[Featherweights] crumble under those shots," McGregor would lament after.
Diaz's chin has always been legendary and he said he used the first round to regain his timing. He eventually caught McGregor square. The fight was soon over, via choke after McGregor went with a Hail Mary/suicide shot of trying to take down Diaz, who is the far superior ground fighter. Probably better to lose by tap out then take punishment.
It should have been OK. The mere taking of the fight signified everything McGregor wanted to be seen as, daring and courageous and tough and even a little bit crazy. It also meant he got paid, headlining a pay per view card that came in around 1.5 million buys.
"I took a shot," McGregor said after the fight. "I went at it. I will never shy away from a challenge. I will never shy away from a defeat. I took the fight and it didn't pay off. This is the fight business."
Only then he followed the same business path, not dropping back down in weight but again seeking the biggest payday, in both cash and reputation, by signing up for a rematch with Diaz, again at 170 pounds.
Only this time Diaz wasn't going to be coming in off the street. This time Diaz has an eight-week camp planned in Stockton, Calif., and the full realization that what had started as an out-of-nowhere gift was now a game changer out of his wildest dreams.
Diaz could now afford to invest in the most elite training. He hired a Los Angeles-based marketing and public relations team to promote him. He believed that if he beat up McGregor again, on a signature card such as 200, he'd immediately be one the promotions five biggest draws. Diaz had spent his career looking for a break, a journeyman, a grinder. He'd fought his way into the UFC via the reality show the Ultimate Fighter. That was nine years and 21 fights ago, just one of them for a title.
If the first McGregor fight was something out of Rocky I, this one was Rocky II, where victory delivered life-changing financial rewards.
If nothing else, McGregor seems to understand the situation he was in. The challenge is immense. The time is not for talking. To defeat a focused and prepared Diaz, he will need more than he has ever shown – stronger striking, better defense, a modicum of a ground game.
He can't talk his way past Nate Diaz. He doesn't need to either; the fight will sell. He's talked enough through the years. He can only prepare now.
"I'm doing what I need for me now," McGregor said. "It is time to be selfish with my training again. It is the only way."
He, as he often is, is right about that.
