Conor McGregor: MMA Game ‘Does Not Excite Me’

Conor McGregor needs to be challenged.

The former two-division UFC champion finds himself bored waiting for his next fight inside the Octagon, which is the reason for his retirement tweet sent out this past weekend.

“The game just does not excite me, and that’s that,” McGregor told ESPN (thanks to MMA Fighting for the quotes). “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.”

McGregor scored a win earlier this year over Donald Cerrone after failing to claim the UFC lightweight title from Khabib Nurmagomedov. He has been pushing for a rematch with Nurmagomedov, but that appears off the table for now with the champion likely to unify the belts vs. interim titleholder Justin Gaethje next.

“They should have just kept the ball rolling. I mean, why are they pushing (Nurmagomedov vs. Gaethje) back to September?” he said. “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.”

He added that everything is “laid out” for his own future in terms of “goals, my plans, the season.” 

“There’s nothing there for me,” McGregor said. “I’m trying to get excited. I’m trying my best. And when the Anderson one came along, I was like, yeah, that’s a mad fight. And then everyone said he’s old and over the hill. I was, like, ‘What? Fighting a former light heavyweight and the middleweight GOAT, and the actual GOAT in my eyes, that’s not a rewardable fight?’

“And you know, you’re actually right. It wouldn’t be rewarded. I would go in there and put him away, and then what would happen? They’d say he’s old and he’s over the hill and he’s past his prime and all.”