Conor McGregor announces his retirement... again

Conor McGregor announcing his retirement is a bit of a tradition in the sport of MMA. At the close of a highly entertaining UFC 250 card, the former UFC champion tweeted out that he has decided to retire from fighting.

This was met with a collective eyeroll from the fan community, who recall two prior false alarms from McGregor. In August of 2016, McGregor tweeted that he had “decided to retire young.” Just months later, he was fighting Eddie Alvarez for the lightweight belt at UFC 205.

Later, in March of 2019, he made an announcement in the same vain, saying he was retiring from “the sport formally known as ‘Mixed Martial Art.’”

Ten months after posting this, he was fighting Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone at UFC 246. With this in mind, the conventional wisdom have it that McGregor is simply using this as a bargaining tactic to get the fight (or the rate) that he wants.

Speaking with ESPN, he cited boredom as his reason for stepping away. “The game just does not excite me, and that’s that,” McGregor said. He expressed frustration that “there’s nothing happening” and that none of his potential opponents pique his interests.

Specifically, McGregor alluded to the UFC wanting to book interim lightweight champion Justin Gaethje to fight lineal champion Khabib Nurmagomedov, while McGregor had been lobbying to fight Gaethje himself for the interim belt.

McGregor’s offer to fight the UFC’s 45-year-old former middleweight king, Anderson Silva, was evidently not well-received by the UFC either.

Of course, all this means is that we can expect to see an official announcement for a McGregor fight fairly soon.