“I AM NOT RETIRED.”
This is what UFC featherweight champion Conor McGregor had to say in a lengthy statement released Thursday.
The MMA superstar caused a stir Tuesday when he sent out a tweet suggesting he was going to retire.
UFC president Dana White announced later in the day that McGregor had been pulled from his UFC 200 main event fight rematch with Nate Diaz because the loquacious Irishman was refusing fly to Las Vegas take part in promotional events.
“Obviously we still have a good relationship with Conor,” White said. “I respect Conor as a fighter and I like him as a person. But you can’t decide not to show up to these things. You have to do it.”
McGregor said there were “many distractions” that contributed to his UFC 196 loss to Diaz, the first loss of his UFC career.
“I am just trying to do my job and fight here,” McGregor wrote in his statement. “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.”
He continued: “I will always play the 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…
“I must isolate myself now. I am facing a taller, longer and heavier man. I need to prepare correctly this time…
“I’m doing what I need for me now. It is time to be selfish with my training again. It is the only way. I feel the $400million I have generated for the company in my last three events, all inside 8 months, is enough to get me this slight leeway. I am still ready to go for UFC 200.”
The UFC has yet to respond to McGregor’s statement and as of Thursday morning he has not been added back to the UFC 200 fight card.
You can read the entire statement on McGregor’s official Facebook page.
When McGregor’s tweet began blowing up Tuesday – it had more than 156,000 retweets within 24 hours of him sending it – speculation swirled as to what other contributing factors caused the sudden retirement talk. Several reports suggested it was a negotiation tactic and that McGregor wanted more money. The fighter and promotion have butted heads at times in the past when coming to terms and reworking his previous contracts.
Another factor stemmed from the recent death of a mixed martial artist named Joao Carvalho, who succumbed to injuries sustained in a fight in Ireland. Carvalho was TKO’d in the third round of a fight with McGregor’s teammate Charlie Ward at a Total Extreme Fighting event earlier this month. McGregor was cageside for that fight and was reportedly deeply affected by the news of Carvalho’s death.
MMAFighting’s Ariel Helwani was a guest on Tim and Sid Wednesday where he talked about some of the issues surrounding this McGregor controversy.
