I think it should be obvious that he is talking about running for the Presidency of Ireland, not USA. Conor has been a bit stand-offish when it comes to UFC ever since he brutally injured himself in a fight against Dustin Poirier and while the return has been much ballyhooed, there has always been something that was getting in the way. His fight against Michael Chandler was meant to be the biggest of the year but then after a press-conference was abruptly cancelled, UFC and McGregor remained oddly quiet as to why that is. To this day they haven't really come clean about what happened but ended up blaming the near-last-minute cancellation of the fight on a broken toe. After responding to a few criticisms about the weak reason for backing out and even suggestions that the toe was intentionally broken or that the X-ray wasn't even Conor's, both the UFC and McGregor have remained quiet about the entire ordeal.
Dana White has shown a real lack of enthusiasm surrounding "The Notorious One" and this is quite unusual for the big bald Chairman of UFC as he normally just sings and sings his praises. I have my own reservations about why Conor has kind of turned his back on the sport but a lot of it probably has to do with him discovering that he can make a ton more money by NOT fighting in MMA than he can in it. Between his various brands and his involvement in other fight promotions, the man certainly doesn't need to fight anymore and one could argue that his fame is right where it needs to be and losing or even under-performing in an MMA fight from this point forward could drop his stock as a global tough guy immensely. So from a purely business standpoint Conor might be making the correct decision to step away from MMA, as much as this disappoints his fans and also people like me who want him to get shown up in the Octagon after years of enduring his trash talk.
When he came through with some Tweets the other day about how he was considering running for President of Ireland though, I thought I was reading an article from a satire website only to discover that Conor actually did say these things.
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Now i don't think that any of the political powerhouses in Ireland need to be all that concerned just yet because if you know anything about Conor, he has a very big mouth. He is able to back it up in the octagon for the most part, but as far as his business success is concerned this is largely "success" in the same capacity that David Beckham achieved success or Wayne Rooney "wrote" a book..... it was mostly because of other people.
Conor called himself the "only logical choice" when referring about who the people of Ireland have to choose among as far as Presidency is concerned and he had this surprisingly poignant follow up to his original statement as well.
As President I hold the power to summon the Dáil as well as dissolve it. So as i said before, I would have all the answers the people of Ireland seek from these thieves of the working man, these disrupters of the family unit, these destructors of small businesses, and on and on…
For those that didn't know much like I didn't until yesterday, the Dáil is basically the Irish Parliament or Congress. I have no idea if the President in that country does in fact have the power to dissolve their elected officials or not but to me that seems like a real heavy amount of power for one person to have.
I think it would be humorous if he were to run, but much like a lot of other celebrities that have had similar notions, I think he will find that the political elites have a great deal more power than even a sports multi-millionaire does and he would likely get squashed even before he could begin. If there were debates, he would probably skirt by on just general talking points and quips about his opponents' choice of clothing and what not, but the political realm is a lot different than a UFC press conference where trash-talking is just the norm.
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I think it would be absolutely wonderful if he stayed in his own persona and actually did participate in these things showing the same level of near contempt for the system that he is participating in, while participating in it.
Here's the thing though. As dumb as Conor definitely is outside of a ring or octagon, the people of the world are fed up enough with the way they are being treated by government to actually have him make a decent run at winning this thing. Just think about all the unrest in the world and how people are sick and tired of things never changing despite the fact that they do, in fact, change who their elected officials are on a regular basis. I can only speak from a USA point of view but politics just generally speaking has long been a "lessor of two evils" sort of situation and nobody really likes any of their options. Therefore, throwing someone in there that definitely came from humble roots that knows nothing about what the job entails could actually get a good following. The people wouldn't be voting for Conor because they think he would be the best at the job, they would vote for him because he isn't part of the system... A system that seems intertwined in most countries to the point that it doesn't really seem to matter who wins, nothing changes.
Here's my prediction though: Conor is going to see that it is actually extremely difficult to run for public office, especially the highest office his country has to offer.... he is going to see how expensive it is and how much time it is going to take and then when he encounters extreme barriers to entry that even his clout and back account cant overcome, he will quietly walk away from this and perhaps have someone else write his Tweets for him for a while.
It's a funny notion and if nothing else perhaps Conor can help to influence an Irish election for someone that he truly believes in. I don't think it would be a good idea for him to actually take the office himself. Although it would be interesting to see him intimidate other world leaders and we would actually be able to see that despite his in-ring performance, Conor is actually not very big at all.
The coming months will tell all but I don't really think this is going anywhere and perhaps he only said it to remain in the spotlight. He is a master of accomplishing that, after all.