Conor McGregor: Retirement Or Not, The End Is Near

Conor McGregor: Retirement Or Not, The End Is Near 

Fight fans are often fed a seemingly never-ending amount of hype, promotion, some quite incredible works of storytelling. I often wonder if people telling the stories think we are really that stupid or gullible.

But judging by the comments on Conor McGregor’s latest retirement tweet, even one of the greatest salesmen of modern times, can’t sell everything.

Whatever the motives behind the tweet, leverage or something else, the majority think its nothing else but part of some story, and one which doesn’t close the book on McGregor’s MMA career.

A single tweet to end one of the greatest, if, at times controversial, MMA careers, doesn’t fit the McGregor mould. You would think a press conference in front of the flashing lights of the press, would be a more fitting end. A retirement speech with one last promo inside the Octagon would be a better fit, ending a career via social media just isn’t McGregor.

But whatever the truth, the end is near, and it has been for some time. McGregor peaked in the Jose Aldo fight in December 2015, as someone famously said, he entered the cage a star and left it a superstar.

McGregor, of course, wasn’t done by any means, Eddie Alvarez couldn’t stop McGregor creating history a year later, but the two Nate Diaz fights in-between highlighted what was to come.

Diaz wouldn’t go in the first fight, and that coupled with poor preparation and thinking he could just KO everyone led to McGregor’s first loss in the UFC, McGregor gassed and then tapped.

Despite preparing properly for the rematch, and at great cost, McGregor still had the same cardio issues, but this time McGregor stayed in there and the two gave us one of the greatest fights in UFC history. But I wonder now what that brutal fight took out of them both, especially McGregor, did he leave a piece of himself in the cage that night.

McGregor was punch perfect, near flawless beating Alvarez, which now looks like one last great performance, the night he should have retired.

The Mayweather millions, took away what was left of the hunger and the return at UFC 229 after two-years away didn’t feel or look the same. The words didn’t flow the same at the pre-fight press conference, and inside the Octagon neither did the punches. Khabib Nurmagomedov proved he was now the one true King.

What was once an obsession has now become a hobby for McGregor, he doesn’t need to fight, and that is the problem. You can’t play at it, dip in and out of a sport that’s ever-evolving, Ronda Rousey found out exactly the same thing.

Retirement is rarely permanent, it usually means just a break from the sport, more often than not they return, McGregor at 30, is too young to let it go, at some point, he will return. The 3rd fight with Nate Diaz looks likely, sooner rather than later in my opinion.

McGregor at his peak was some performer, with his fists and with his mouth, what we have now just isn’t the same. If McGregor does return, which I think he will, I hope the obsession returns, but I think that version of McGregor has already gone, probably forever.