Former UFC Lightweight and Featherweight champion Conor McGregor has said that he fell out of love with fighting since his last UFC fight and that he was irritated by the UFC stripping him of his belts over the last two years.
McGregor will make his long awaited return to the UFC this weekend when he takes on the undefeated Khabib Nurmagomedov at UFC 229 in Las Vegas on Saturday and the Dubliner has said that the consistent uncertainty around the UFC’s matchmaking caused him to fall out of love with fighting.
“I don’t owe nobody an answer for nothing,” McGregor told his website The Mac Life.
“I’m here for the love of this game and for the love of competition. I fell out of love with the game for a bit, went off and done my own thing, had many things going on but now I’m back and I’m hungry to compete.”
He continued: “I spent my entire life’s work to win those two world titles, those two UFC world titles. I sacrificed so much time, I sacrificed so much to gain those world titles and then as soon as I won the second world title, I hadn’t even been offered a featherweight contest and the featherweight title was taken off me and handed back to a man that I had a crazy history with, I traveled the world with, two year build up, he ended up pulling out last minute…. blah, blah, blah…. and when I ended up fighting him I knocked him out in 13 seconds.
“They give him the belt back as soon as I walked out of the Octagon in Madison Square Garden and then like what, a month or two [April 2018], and the lightweight belt is stripped from me also.
“These kind of things irritated me, especially seeing what way it goes and who the belts are given to, who the people that are challenging for the belts, who the person that has the belt that is facing to get the belt, many things irritated me and then watching it all unfold I became a lot more hungry to come back and show who the real king is.”
McGregor insists that he is not returning tot he UFC for the money, even though he did agree to a six-fight deal with the promotion that will see his new whiskey brand Proper No. Twelve serve as a canvas sponsor for all his future fights, and that he actually offered to take a pay cut to fight Frankie Edgar at UFC 222 after featherweight champion Max Holloway withdrew from his fight with Edgar due to a leg injury.
“It was only a couple of days out from the fight so I said 155 for that one,” added McGregor.
“They refused me because they anticipated that it would have cost them too much money to have me show up with too little time to promote. I was willing to take a pay cut. I’m not in this for the money.
“Of course I’m not going to fight for less than I’m worth but in those instances I would have. I just wanted to get in and compete. Frankie was supposed to fight Max and I have a history with Frankie. We’ve been linked many times so I thought it was going to be a perfect opportunity.
“They turned it down as soon as they knew it was going to cost too much. I would have been willing to take a pay cut. Then the [Rafael] dos Anjos fight later on, it was an interim 170 pound belt in Rio de Janeiro on May 5th [originally scheduled for UFC 224 on May 12th verse Colby Covington, later moved to UFC 225] I reached out again, I will take this contest and let’s not let the same error happen in the Frankie contest, let’s discuss. I’m willing to take a pay cut.
“Even this one… well the pay-per-view is going to be tasty… but I mean I’m not here for the money. I wanted to compete those times. I missed the game back then.
“Obviously that didn’t happen and the situation arose with this next opponent and my team, and it got a little bit more personal and a little bit more…. just a lot more personal to be honest and here we are on this one.”
