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Sorting out what’s what in Conor McGregor’s fiery ass statement
- Updated: April 21, 2016
Turns out Conor McGregor’s retirement lasted about 45 hours. On Thursday, just a day before the UFC 200 press conference he refused to attend so he could focus on training, McGregor reenlisted himself into the ranks of the active. He put out a declarative statement regarding his stance. Let’s deconstruct that statement, just so we can (hopefully) gain a little perspective. Starting at the beginning, which was loaded.”I am just trying to do my job and fight here. 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.”See, the thing is when Nick Diaz got lopped out of his title fight with Georges St-Pierre at UFC 137 for missing media events, it was a little different. Diaz was coming back to the UFC after fighting in Strikeforce, where he was the welterweight champion. Him fighting under the UFC banner was novel, and the promotional champion against champion motif was hot in the air. The need to have Diaz on hand was obvious. There was a want of footage, of soundbites, of live airborne hostility to market.Back then Dana White, who subbed Carlos Condit in for Diaz with parental authority, declared that he just wanted Stockton’s finest to “play the game a little bit.” Diaz, Dana would swiftly learn, doesn’t go in for selling “wolf tickets” (and even when he does, it’s but reluctantly). McGregor was pulled out of his UFC 200 rematch with Nick’s kid brother Nate because of similar insubordination. The difference is McGregor’s already played the game a lot of bit. As in, masterfully — better than any UFC fighter before him. He’s engaged in world tours to promote a fight against Jose Aldo, and kicked his feet up in Brazil amid death chants. He’s accepted short notice fights to save events. He’s done the ESPN car wash so many times his fender has an eternal shine. He is a natural salesman, to the point that all he needs to do is send out a tweet for the fight world to come unhinged.There’s a major difference.(Also interesting, or telling, is that he said, “I am not yet paid to promote”…but we all know McGregor has a distant eye cast on “Conor Promotions”).”There comes a time when you need to stop handing out flyers and get back to the damn shop. 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.”His numbers seem inflated, but you had to wonder when McGregor might come to such a realization. He’s essentially been paraded around on an endless loop since he stepped foot in Boston to face Max Holloway in 2013. There was a media day set up for him moments after he touched down at Logan International, down at Peter Welch’s gym in Southie. The carpet wasn’t nearly as red as it would eventually get, but there was a media throng ready to meet-and-greet the UFC’s new firebrand, which he readily obliged. McGregor hit the ground running.Three years later — and even through convalescing a torn ACL, which he kept himself in the spotlight through by setting the entire pantheon of featherweights on fire — he’s essentially been going nonstop. All it took was a loss — something he hadn’t experience in seven UFC fights — for him to reevaluate his priorities. It’s not hard to see why he wouldn’t want to fragment his regroup training camp with press hops to Vegas, Stockton and New York, especially given the added pressure of living up to what he’s carved out for himself: That is, as the game’s greatest circus barker. The attraction. The Irish coxcomb with a mystic side that allows him to foresee events before they unfold. It’s remarkable he’s gone as far as he has without a come down.”Nothing else was going through my mind.”There were …
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