Conor McGregor released a statement Thursday assuring fans he wasn't retired from mixed martial arts, no matter what a cryptic tweet Tuesday implied.

He explained why he refused to fly to Las Vegas and do promotional work for July's historic UFC 200, an act of insubordination that caused the UFC to pull him from the headlining rematch with Nate Diaz, who defeated him in March.

"I am just trying to do my job and fight here," McGregor wrote on Facebook. "I am paid to fight. I am not yet paid to promote. I have become lost in the game of promotion and forgot about the art of fighting. There comes a time when you need to stop handing out flyers and get back to the damn shop."

View photos Nate Diaz, top, trades punches with Conor McGregor during their UFC 196 match. (AP) More

There may not be a better promoter than McGregor in sports today and in many ways this might be his finest bit of PR to date. Not paid to promote? Oh, McGregor knows better that. He's made his millions in part because he promotes.

Thursday may have been his crowning achievement in that pursuit though. He won not just the court of public opinion but possibly forced the UFC to put him back on the card. Critics have called Conor McGregor a lot of names but dumb has never been one of them.

His retired/not retired act actually generated more interest in him, UFC 200 and his chance at reversing a defeat to Diaz than anything he could have said or done in front of the cameras this weekend. (His cryptic tweet was retweeted 170,000 times. Within two hours his Facebook statement had been shared 180,000 times and generated more than 85,000 comments.)

And then in one social media post he managed to assert his single-minded focus on his craft and remind everyone of the stakes and danger of facing the bigger, stronger Diaz again, all while painting UFC management into a corner of frivolous marketing and lack of respect for fighting.

"I need to focus on me now," McGregor wrote. "I'm coming for my revenge here …"

And then:

"I will always play the [promotional] game and play it better than anybody, but just for this one, where I am coming off a loss, I asked for some leeway where I can just train and focus. I did not shut down all media requests. I simply wanted a slight adjustment.

"But it was denied …"

And then:

"I must isolate myself now. I am facing a taller, longer and heavier man. I need to prepare correctly this time. I can not dance for you this time."

Have Herb Dean stop the fight, it's all over, knockout via Facebook post.

____________________

His days on the dole in Dublin, before he became a UFC star and multi-millionaire, seemed to shape everything Conor McGregor would become, obsessed with being noticed, obsessed with exerting his power, obsessed, of course, with money.

Welfare can sustain a man in the toughest of times. It also can demand repayment, often in self-worth.

In Ireland you often need to stand in an actual line to get your money, down at the post office or welfare department, in the so-called dole queue. You have to show your ID, show proof of joblessness, show your face to whomever walks by.

"That can drain a man's mind," McGregor told Breitbart Sports last year.

His poverty was not merely one of youth, one that could be shrugged off as the circumstance of family or life. McGregor was receiving benefits as recently as a month before his UFC debut. That was 2013. He was 24. He was a grown man, his own man, and still there he was. He'd given up part-time work as a plumber to concentrate on MMA, but to how many people seeing him rely on the government was that just some pipe dream? Sure, sure, future champion of the world.

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