UFC removes McGregor from UFC 200 headliner

Published on Wednesday, 4/20/16, at 2:15 p.m. Eastern.

Twitter was set ablaze early Tuesday afternoon when Conor McGregor posted this tweet:

I have decided to retire young.
Thanks for the cheese.
Catch ya’s later.

— Conor McGregor (@TheNotoriousMMA) April 19, 2016

I didn’t give it any credence whatsoever. I figured it was clearly a negotiation ploy, a joke or some sort of need for attention.

We found out on ESPN’s Sports Center at 8:00 p.m. Eastern last night that the UFC had yanked McGregor off of the UFC 200 card because he didn’t want to fly from Iceland, where he is currently training, to Las Vegas this weekend when the organization is spending $10 million on promotional commercials, ads, etc.

McGregor was scheduled to face Nate Diaz in a rematch after the Stockton native submitted ‘The Notorious’ in the second round of the UFC 196 headliner in early March.

While joining The Herd on Fox Sports 1 earlier this afternoon, Dana White explained that McGregor just didn’t want to have his training interrupted and that this was never an issue about money. White and the UFC brass weren’t having it and subsequently removed McGregor from the show at T-Mobile Arena in Vegas on July 9.

You can check out White’s entire interview on The Herd here.

The UFC is currently looking for a new main event. Stay tuned for more information on this fluid story.