On Thursday, reigning UFC featherweight world champion Conor McGregor broke his silence regarding the whole UFC 200 brouhaha, which ended in him being pulled out of the card, altogether.
In a lengthy Facebook post he released, McGregor pointed out how doing all the promotional work for the company has actually been taxing for him.
There comes a time when you need to stop handing out flyers and get back to the damn shop. 50 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.
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And the many distractions that led to this. Nothing else was going through my mind. It is time to go back and live the life that got me this life.
Retired UFC heavyweight Brendan Schaub has seen McGregor in full swing in terms of fight promotions, and he believes it is understandable for the Irishman to demand for less press obligations and put more focus on training.
“Any other fighter (who) sits down to do an interview, they’re really not selling the fight,” Schaub said in his recent appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. “They’re talking about their camp, and they’re doing the same thing over and over. Conor’s a f—–g master that we’ve never seen do it before.”
“He’s coming up with original content, non-stop, he’s on. When he came on our podcast, he did the whole carwash, he was exhausted. And then when he came down, you could tell he was thinking and just started spinning out gold. He’s just a beast, man.”
“So to have that guy fly around the world and do all this sh-t, at the end of the day, we gotta remember, this is a sport,” he added. “This is not the WWE.”
As a former fighter himself, Schaub says he sees both the UFC’s side and McGregor’s side, noting that it is all one big miscommunication that needs to be sorted out.
“We’re in the hurt business. He has to focus, man,” Schaub said. “I think Conor’s to blame, too, Dana’s to blame. I think both of them just need to talk.”