Conor McGregor Announces Retirement for the Third Time in 4 Years

Conor McGregor seems to have had his fill of fighting once again.

Shortly after UFC 250, the UFC superstar took to Twitter to declare that he was stepping away from MMA.

In an interview with ESPN on Sunday morning, McGregor mentioned that he has lost his passion for the sport.

“The game just does not excite me, and that’s that,” McGregor said. “All this waiting around. There’s nothing happening. I’m going through opponent options, and there’s nothing really there at the minute. There’s nothing that’s exciting me.

“They should have just kept the ball rolling. I mean, why are they pushing [Khabib Nurmagomedov vs. Justin Gaethje] back to September? You know what’s going to happen in September, something else is going to happen in September, and that’s not going to happen. I laid out a plan and a method that was the right move, the right methods to go with. And they always want to balk at that and not make it happen or just drag it on. Whatever I say, they want to go against it to show some kind of power. They should have just done the fight — me and Justin for the interim title — and just kept the ball rolling.”

The former featherweight and lightweight champion of the UFC has now declared his retirement for the third time in four years.

“I’m a bit bored of the game,” he told ESPN. “I’m here watching the fight. I watched the last show — the [Tyron-Woodley-Gilbert Burns] show — I watched the show tonight. I’m just not excited about the game, Ariel. I don’t know if it’s no crowd. I don’t know what it is. There’s just no buzz for me.”

His first retirement was in March 2016, but he later came back and defeated Diaz in August of the same year.

McGregor also announced his retirement on Twitter in April 2019 during negotiations with the UFC, only to return and beat Donald Cerrone in just 40 seconds in January.

Unsurprisingly, many do not believe that he is serious about retiring this time around.