Win or Lose, Is This the Last We See of Conor McGregor the Fighter?

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Back in the summer of 2014, when Conor McGregor was preparing for a fight in which he wasn’t even the main event—before he knocked out Jose Aldo or faced off with Nate Diaz or became the UFC’s first-ever simultaneous two-division champion—the Irishman posted a tweet that is echoing all this time later.

That tweet and its six words—Get in. Get rich. Get out.—are on the minds of many as McGregor makes his final preparations to take part in possibly the richest event in combat sports history.

When he steps into the ring on August 26 and ensures his purse, he’ll have secured the first two phases of his philosophy in short order. Don’t get us wrong, he was already rich by any standards before that. But the payday he’ll make for stepping in with Floyd Mayweather Jr. is generational wealth, the kind of mind-blowing riches that ensure that barring complete financial recklessness, he’ll never have to work another day in his life.

Which leads us to the last two words, the ones that matter the most to the MMA world on August 27: Get out. Will he follow his own advice and walk away?

Bleacher Report lead writer Jeremy Botter is joined by former B/R columnist Mike Chiappetta to discuss the subject. 

Mike Chiappetta: If McGregor is going to make an early exit from the fight world, this is the time to do it. Even though he’s only 29 years old, it’s unlikely he’ll ever see another payday like this in his career. The circumstances required to make this type of mega-event don’t just pop up regularly. Instead, this is a unicorn, a perfect confluence of events, athletes and zeitgeist to support such a show.

John Locher/Associated Press

Barring an unlikely McGregor shocker (and a Mayweather rematch), there is no other boxing fight that would draw such money, and there’s no way in the UFC for him to make the same type of cash.

So what does he do here?

To get this out of the way, I think there’s no chance this is the last we see of McGregor in a cage or ring. Someone who loves money the way he does does not get out of the moneymaking business at 29. He’s simply going to try to figure out a way to get more of the promoter’s share for himself. How does he do that? Coming off his fight with Mayweather, his Q-rating will be at an all-time high. He will likely demand to renegotiate his UFC contract for the largest pay-per-view percentage of anyone in promotional history.

And he has leverage on his side. Not just his popularity, but time and money. The UFC knows he doesn’t have to fight again. It also knows he has the war chest to challenge it in court and the time to wait for the legal process to play out if he decides to go that route.

That’s not to say the UFC will cave easily. It has waged most of its biggest battles against its biggest stars (see Randy Couture, Jon Jones, et. al.), and even though McGregor’s relationship with management has been generally good (with some rocky patches along the way), the power dynamic is shifting. The UFC needs superstars, and right now, McGregor is it. There are few other clear routes to having huge events than by being in the McGregor business.

I do believe McGregor will be back, but it may take a while to get him here.

Jeremy, you’ve had some strong thoughts on McGregor’s future in the past, and most of them have been on the money. Do you think he ever fights in the UFC again?

Jeremy Botter: Not only do I think he never fights in the UFC again, Mike...I am absolutely certain he never fights in the UFC again.

Barring some kind of circumstance where McGregor loses every penny he’s made overnight and is forced to return just to eke out a living, we are never going to see him back in the Octagon. And the reason has little to do with money.

For over two years, people close to McGregor have told me of his concern for his long-term health, most notably the status of his brain. McGregor has long been hyper-aware of the risks that come along with combat sports—and the awful effects of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). And that was before the tragic death of Joao Carvalho a year ago.

Mike, I get why you think he just has to come back and fight. That’s the normal way of things in combat sports. Fighters, professional wrestlers, boxers...they’re never really retired, are they? They’re always on the verge of a comeback. There’s always a young buck they think they’ve got an edge on. There’s always a tax man looking to collect.

But McGregor has never been a normal fighter, or a normal human. What you’ve seen over the course of his rise in the UFC was laid out in his mind before he ever stepped foot in the Octagon. The things we’re seeing now? They’re the things he used to daydream about. The things he used to visualize. Other fighters dream of reaching the pinnacle of the UFC, of winning UFC belts. That’s the culmination of their personal journeys and arcs. But there’s nothing normal about McGregor, and thus you can’t expect him to follow the same kind of path. Or, you shouldn’t, anyway.

Winning UFC gold was just a stop along the way. It was a tool he could use to springboard to greater heights. If you haven’t seen yet that McGregor has his eyes in a life encompassing far more than combat sports, you haven’t been paying close attention.

The evidence is right in front of you. McGregor Sports and Entertainment. The new line of tailored suits. The flirtations with Hollywood roles. The bolstering of his own media outlet. Hell, he’s told us in plain language what the plan is: Get rich. Get out.

The signs have been right in front of our eyes the whole time: This man is not coming back to the Octagon.

Chiappetta: You make a convincing argument. McGregor has indeed offered these indications, and it would be foolish to ignore them. I believe that he believed what he said at the time. But that was then, at another time, and that’s the key reason for my skepticism.

Sure, he’s made other business moves. The promotional company, the suit line, the media work, it’s all a nice extension of his brand, but will any of it scratch the primal itch he’s had for competition for years? Not likely.

We all joke about how many attempts at retirement fighters must make to get it right, but how many walk away at 29 without a second thought? While I concede that McGregor is a special case for the money he earned, I don’t think he’s so different that he will find an outlet that suits him the way fighting does.

Let’s assume he goes into fight promotion. Are you telling me that you think he will spend time around the fight world but somehow avoid scratching the itch to return? I say that’s highly unlikely. Impossible? No. But when you’ve identified as an athlete and a fighter for so long—and you’re still in your athletic prime—the prospect of voluntarily putting yourself on the shelf forever seems close to improbable.

Look, if he did it—if he managed to call it a career and move on to other interests, and stay away from fighting—I would be thrilled for the guy. He’d be one of the first ever to do it right. Muhammad Ali couldn’t walk away without a comeback. “Sugar” Ray Leonard couldn’t. Neither could Mike Tyson or Chuck Liddell or Fedor Emelianenko. The list goes on.

Get in, get rich, get out should be the mantra of every combat sports athlete, but these guys are not wired for practicality. They are wired for risk-taking and extreme personal challenge. I can’t see a suit line and a business role placating those compulsions, not at this age. If Georges St-Pierre couldn’t go a few years without getting desperate to fight again, I can’t see McGregor’s path going any differently.

Brandon Magnus/Zuffa LLC/Getty Images

Jeremy, are you telling me you don’t see any way he returns to combat sports? Regardless of what he’s said, there has to be some part of you that believes the idea of him retiring at 29 to be far-fetched.

Botter: OK, look. What if he somehow beats Mayweather? Or even if he loses, what if he finds himself with the opportunity to face either Canelo Alvarez or Gennady Golovkin? I’m not daft enough to claim he’d overlook another massive payday for stepping in the boxing ring one more time.

But I don’t think either of those things happen. They’re purely theoretical.

McGregor is different than all the other guys you mentioned. His obsession isn’t combat sports or competition. His obsession is making money, and not just good money, and not just enough money to make him a rich man. McGregor’s obsession is with making money on the level of, say, Lorenzo Fertitta. His obsession lies in garnering power on the level of a Jay Z. Combat sports can’t bring him either of those things, at least not on the scale he seeks.

I know it’s tough to imagine a guy like this walking away from combat sports at the height of his popularity, and it’s even tougher to imagine him staying away. I know one of McGregor’s goals has been to promote his own fights at Dublin’s Croke Park, either with the UFC as a co-promoter or by going it alone. I suppose that’s one way we could see him back in an Octagon after the Mayweather fight.

But knowing what we do of the UFC’s history, do we really think they’re going to willingly co-promote fights with someone, even if that someone has the stature of McGregor? I’m highly skeptical. The UFC is a machine that operates on a brand-first basis, and allowing co-promotion even for McGregor will open itself up to all sorts of issues with other fighters in the future. And I just don’t see it happening.

Chiappetta: But Jeremy, you don’t have to imagine the UFC co-promoting with someone; it is doing it right now! Even if the fight is a boxing match, the UFC effectively had to agree to something it hasn’t done since it lent Chuck Liddell to Pride back in 2003. It signed off on co-promotion. It shared the pie.

I’m not pretending it did it for altruistic reasons. It did it for money, and money alone, but that fits into the ethos of the WME-IMG ownership group. Researching its co-CEO Ari Emanuel, it seems his management style is mostly improvisational. He’s not married to the old Fertitta/White ideas, so what’s to say he and the new UFC management team won’t consider McGregor’s demands again? After all, a lesser piece of McGregor’s next fight is still a bigger profit-driver for them than any standard UFC pay-per-view. As long as the math works in their favor, I very much expect them to consider it and eventually accept it.

Ari Emanuel (right) and Dana White will have to show Conor the money.Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports

I guess for me, it comes down to one thing: This is a new era. It’s easy to frame this debate within the context of the old days when Fertitta and White ran the show, but this is a different time. One thing Emanuel and co-CEO Patrick Whitesell understand is the power of a superstar, and if McGregor wants to be a part of the UFC going forward, they innately understand the value of keeping him and will certainly consider what it takes to keep him in the fold.

This isn’t like the situation of Ronda Rousey wanting to fade away. McGregor wants to fight; he just has a list of demands. Emanuel and Whitesell have built an empire on high-stakes negotiation, so I’m going to bet they find a way to reach a deal with the biggest star MMA has ever known.