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All sides hush hush after Conor McGregor tweets that he is retiring

Kevin Iole
·Senior boxing/MMA columnist

UFC featherweight champion Conor McGregor created a furor on Tuesday when in a brief tweet he announced that he was retiring. The tweet instantly went viral, being shared more than 1,000 times in less than three minutes. The furor only intensified with the hours-long silence that followed from all sides involved.

Conor McGregor (Getty Images)
Conor McGregor (Getty Images)

Yahoo Sports couldn't reach McGregor, his coach John Kavanagh, McGregor's manager Audie Attar or UFC president Dana White for comment. UFC vice president and spokesman Dave Sholler was on a plane flying back to Las Vegas.

On Monday, McGregor tweeted a photo of himself that he said was taken at Mjolnir MMA in Reykjavik, Iceland. He is scheduled to rematch Nate Diaz in the main event of UFC 200 on July 9 in Las Vegas.

But at about 1:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday, he tweeted about his retirement and then went silent.

About an hour later, Kavanagh of the Straight Blast Gym in Dublin, Ireland, tweeted as well:

The lack of response from anyone connected with the UFC as well as from Attar or Kavanagh only caused theories to abound on the Internet.

The three main ones were that McGregor was joking; that he was trying to leverage his popularity in a contract dispute with the UFC; or that he might be upset by the tragic death of Joao Carvalho, who died following a bout with Charlie Ward in Dublin on April 9. McGregor was in attendance at that fight.

He later posted about it on his Facebook page.

Terrible news regarding Joao Carvalho. To see a young man doing what he loves, competing for a chance at a better life, and then to have it taken away is truly heartbreaking. We are just men and women doing something we love in the hope of a better life for ourselves and our families. Nobody involved in combat sports of any kind wants to see this. It is such a rare occurrence that I don't know how to take this. I was ringside supporting my teammate, and the fight was so back and forth, that I just can't understand it.

McGregor, though, made several posts after that on social media indicating that he was training hard for the Diaz fight. In one, he posted a picture of himself and Kavanagh on April 16:

But since his retirement tweet, he's said nothing.

There have long been rumors in MMA circles about friction between McGregor and the UFC, but both sides have thus far denied it. The UFC has officially announced the UFC 200 bout, and McGregor has signed for the bout. He can't be forced to fight if he doesn't want to, so he is within his rights to retire.

But if this is some kind of a ploy for more money, he lost some leverage by signing his name on the contract.

Diaz seemed to have fun with the announcing, putting out a tweet of his own not long after McGregor.

Until someone on some side of this talks, or McGregor clears it up with another tweet, the speculation is going to continue. If anything, though, the furor served to show just how big McGregor has come in such a short period of time.