I awoke Tuesday morning, April 19, to a Twitter notification on my phone alerting me of a recent tweet by UFC superstar Conor McGregor. The tweet was short and simple:
“I have decided to retire young.
Thanks for the cheese.
Catch ya’s later.”
My first thought: It’s a joke. McGregor says anything he wants and doesn’t care about repercussions. Maybe he was just 18 days late on his April Fools' gag. Plus, he’s only 27 years old with a big fight coming up. My second thought: Someone hacked his Twitter account. I began pondering how secure my account is and how easy it would be for someone to hack it. I held on to these two notions throughout the morning, mulling them over in my head. I’m a big fan of McGregor. I’ve been following his career closely for about two years now; I published an article about him last month ahead of his UFC 196 slug-fest with Nate Diaz. But as my day continued, and the rest of the world shared in uneasy confusion, I began to consider its legitimacy.
My next assumption was that it had to be about money. McGregor knows his worth to the UFC -- he’s the biggest star they’ve ever had. He estimates that he’s generated the UFC $400 million in his last three events. He has had the three largest MMA gate totals in Nevada history. There is merit to his $400 million estimation. He made $1,000,000 for his fight with Nate Diaz—and he lost the fight—Diaz made $500,000. Rumors claim that McGregor wanted $10,000,000 for what was his upcoming fight at UFC 200 in July. It’s likely that the UFC wouldn’t jump at offering him that much cash and that this might be the reason for his retirement.
Then I had another thought.
McGregor was ringside to watch his teammate Charlie Ward defeat Joao Carvalho on April 9 in Dublin. Carvalho was hospitalized and later died from injuries sustained in the fight. McGregor released a lengthy statement that included: “Combat sport is a crazy game and with the recent incident in boxing and now this in MMA, it is a sad time to be a fighter and a fight fan.” McGregor is smart, he understands the risks that accompany his way of living. He’s always said he wants to make all the money he can then ride off into the sunset. After witnessing the unthinkable firsthand, it’s reasonable to conclude that this was the reason for the abrupt announcement.
However, 48 hours after the tweet seen around the world, McGregor decided to end his silence and put an end to the frenzy. The reasoning he gave did not match anything I have proposed above. He released a statement saying that the reason for his retirement was because of the exhausting promotional obligations fighters must endure. “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.” McGregor lives in Ireland and has been training in Iceland. I cannot help but think about "Rocky IV" when Balboa travels to Soviet Russia and trains out in the middle of nowhere in order to avoid distractions. McGregor’s opponent, Diaz, lives and trains in Stockton, California. Clearly, press conferences, photo shoots, and commercial filming is a lot more accessible to him than it is to McGregor. But fighting is a game of promotion, and all of this is required of a fighter. McGregor reached his breaking point and announced his retirement. In response, the UFC pulled McGregor from his rematch with Diaz set for UFC 200 in July, a highly anticipated and landmark event for the sport. McGregor concluded his statement by adamantly saying, “I AM NOT RETIRED.”
So the UFC’s biggest star has voiced his displeasure with all that fight promotion entails. His employer responded by pulling him from his UFC 200 headline rematch against Nate Diaz. Now we stand at a stalemate and there is a lot left to be determined. Thankfully, though, we can be sure about one thing: McGregor is not retired, and his career is far from over.
