Be the jaysus, the man doesn't half know how to cause a bit of a stir. 144,000 retweets and counting and if, as many have speculated, it's all about ramping up even more interest in 'brand McGregor' then he has well and truly succeeded.
Bravo and all that, but at the end of the day there's a fair old chunk of fans who would have already put some hard earned cash into booking flights and hotels for the weekend of UFC 200. That's not to say that McGregor's riding roughshod over his fans for the sake of it but, you'd like to think that at least some amount of thought has gone into all this and his reasoning behind it is more than just to increase his twitter followers.
As per Kevin Iole of Yahoo sports, the timeline that's gone on behind the scenes is as follows:
Regardless of his training plans, the UFC began organising flights for McGregor over two weeks ago to ensure he'd be in Vegas this week for the now crucial press conference and marketing duties to kick off the countdown to UFC 200.
It must be said that two months before the event is a rather ludicrous timeframe to be breaking up a training camp to concentrate on promotion but that's nothing new for UFC and McGregor has never had a problem with such demands before. Nonetheless, those demands from the UFC were met head on from McGregor and it was made clear that enough was enough.
Talks continued over the past couple of weeks and, with McGregor having already flown to Iceland at the start of the week, the UFC decided on Monday to pull him from UFC 200. Audie Attar, McGregor's business manager intervened and it looked like a bit of time may have been bought but the Dubliner wasn't for budging and, although it would appear to be a hasty move judging by that timeline, the retirement tweet was sent, the UFC's arm was forced and the promotion decided to 'pull' McGregor from UFC 200.
But the question remains, just why did McGregor take the decision to throw up his arms and say enough is enough? We've been through this before. If anything, he's been the one driving his fellow competitors to do more of the promotional side of things. When the time for the biggest show he might ever sell, why would McGregor down tools after the fight had been made and contracts signed?
For that we'll turn to Ariel Helwani and Luke Thomas for MMAFighting. If you watch one analysis of McGregor mania over the past 24 hours or so, make it this one.
Quite simply, according to Helwani, it's impossible to ignore the death of Joao Carvalho as a factor in all this. It must be said that Carvalho's passing is more important than any of this and the fact that McGregor's 'retirement' took away a lot of interest from the fact that Carvalho's brother appeared on Prime Time last night was very unfortunate indeed.
However, Helwani's explanation certainly hits home. It may not be enough to force McGregor to actually hang up his gloves for good but there's no doubt that to travel to Las Vegas and put on the show like nothing had happened may be just too bitter a pill to swallow.
A lot has been made of what McGregor's long term plans are. The idea of setting up his own promotion has been floated for a while but would now, two months before UFC 200 and after he signed a fight contract really be the time to go about that? Probably not.
As Josh Barnett pointed out earlier today, retirement would get him out of his contract but that's not to say he can simply announce his retirement and conveniently change his mind, set up a promotion and rake in millions.
Contract wise he can't just leave the UFC. The retirement clause is really the only option. https://t.co/AcnSXBn5RE
— 𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝖂𝖆𝖗𝖒𝖆𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖗 (@JoshLBarnett) April 20, 2016
The UFC and their legal team would surely have an awful lot to say about that so, although that may be the long term goal, McGregor would have things planned out a lot better than to simply spring that now. The sudden nature of it all, the fact that he broke the news without adequate stage management points to the fact that it's reactionary much more than carefully constructed. Carvalho's passing will inevitably have affected McGregor, it would be impossible for it not to have and to face the media machine in the direct aftermath of that may have just pushed the pressure cooker that McGregor is living in past boiling point.
We imagine these individuals as their public personas but things still get the better of the best of us and Helwani's theory for McGregor's withdrawal from being the UFC promotion puppet in chief, is certainly not an unimaginable possibility.
