Now that Conor McGregor is back, it's like he never left. In one conference call, McGregor gave the media quotes for days, talked about Brock Lesnar (as well as the rest of the WWE roster), his "media empire" and the move role he turned down on his quest to defeat Nate Diaz. It was inevitable that McGregor would one day be in the talks for a film, but it didn't seem like the timing was right. In retrospect, it may have been a good decision given how Ronda Rousey's superstardom was often attributed as a factor to her defeat.
"I should get a cut of that. I didn’t even get a thank you," McGregor said in typical fashion when speaking about Michael Bisping, the UFC fighter who replaced him in 'xXx: The Return of Xander Cage'. "That was my role. I met with the guy before the Aldo fight. The director came out, him and his little team came out and we spoke. I said I’ll do the film," said McGregor on the UFC 202 conference call.
However, that was before Diaz choked McGregor. Now, the younger Diaz brother is the sole focus of McGregor's energy. It was this focus that caused him to neglect UFC 200 media duties which, in turn, got him pulled from the card and the fight booked for UFC 202 next weekend. "I rang him up and said, ‘Listen, I can’t go into this film because it’s not something I’m trying to do right now, I need to get that win back and I need to go focus and do what got me here in the first place. I disengaged from the film altogether. That was a seven-figure deal that I turned down to prepare for this fight. Bisping scooped up the role, he got it and that was that. I just let that go. This is more important to me. I said it before: I’m not in this for show business. This is the fight business I am in here and that’s all I’m trying to do here.”
On August 20th in Las Vegas, Diaz will test if McGregor's Hollywood sacrifices made a difference at UFC 202.
