“Conor himself said before that he wouldn’t give his belt away by any chance and nobody would take it away from him. After all this, I see I can’t trust any word from president Dana White, and who’s in charge of the promotion now is Conor McGregor. Since I’m not here to be an employee of McGregor, today I ask to cancel my contract with the UFC.

When they offered me a fight with Frankie Edgar, Dana said that the winner would challenge McGregor or win the linear title, that he would lose his belt if he didn’t return to the featherweight division after his rematch with Nate Diaz. After being fooled so many times, I don’t feel motivated to fight in the UFC anymore.

I don’t want a fight. I want to leave as I came in. The UFC and WEC didn’t give me anything. Everything I conquered was my merit and from my team. Nobody gave me anything. I conquered everything. And I gave them a lot more than they gave me back. I just want them to release me from my contract. I’m not a whore to sell myself for money.

I don’t even want to fight MMA. I want to follow a career in another sport. That’s what I want.”

“For me, I don’t feel like fighting anymore. It’s not a matter of retiring, of who I’m fighting, I have other projects in my life. I wanted to retire as a champion, and now I’m a champion, so that’s it. It’s not about fights or anything like that. It’s about me wanting to go a different path.

UFC President Dana White can offer whatever he wants. I started getting demotivated way back, when I lost the belt. I think due to the fact that I’d been champion for so long, I was entitled to an immediate rematch. They didn’t give me that, and made me fight Frankie Edgar even though I didn’t want to fight anymore.

For me, I already wanted to go a different way, and ‘Dede’ (Nova Uniao head coach Andre Pederneiras) made me fight. I fought and won, and the rematch didn’t come afterward. So there’s no reason to fight. I don’t have the passion anymore, the will to fight. I have other goals in life, so I want to go my way.

I’m not leaving the biggest championship in the world to play in a smaller league. I’m a big team. I want to be in the best promotion in the world. If it’s not the UFC, I’m not fighting anywhere else.

I want to walk out the same way I walked in. I want to pursue different things. Especially here in Brazil, I want to pursue other things. I don’t want to fight in MMA, which they forbid. If I ever do come back, I want it to be in the UFC, because it’s where I came from and where I deserve to be. I just have other projects.

They have the rights even over my breathing. If I so much as breathe outside the UFC, I can’t.

If I want to retire, no contract can hold me back. I can sit down and retire – they can’t make me fight. I don’t want to fight anymore. There’s a contract, my lawyers saw it, they’re aware of everything. But I don’t want to fight them. They want me to fight? I can go in there, tap three times, the fight is over instantly.

I think you need to decide what you want – either you’re a sport or a business. You can’t be in the middle, it’s impossible to please everyone. So, it’s like ‘Dede’ said way back, if they wanted to be an Olympic sport, it would break a lot of people. With doping, everything, it would change the sport entirely – like it’s been breaking them a bit already.

I think everyone fights for money, but I had that mindset of leaving a legacy, of leaving my name in history when I retired. That’s what I wanted. Now I don’t think that way anymore. From the moment I lost the belt and saw the reality – being a champion is worth shit.

What matters is money in pocket. That’s what I’m thinking. That’s why I said, ‘******* Holloway with his eight wins.’ Some people win 10, 15, and don’t fight the belt. Who is he to say anything?”

‘Nowadays, wrong is right’

If I continue, of course, I want to see money. That’s what goes. It’s not about winning, being a correct fighter. Nowadays, wrong is right. There’s not reason for me to go, be a good guy, do what you have to do, do as they say. That’s not the right way. That’s wrong nowadays.

The right thing is spitting on people’s faces, snorting cocaine, smoking pot, throwing water at people, cussing, not showing up at press conferences. That’s the right thing nowadays, so it’s what the Brazilian athletes need to do.

As I saw way back, when they came to Brazil, too, like I saw them wearing ‘Combate’ shirts and promoting Brazil because it was a good market. The minute you stop being a good market, they toss you to the side, move on to the next one. That’s how it goes.”

I came in as ‘Scarface,’ and I’m leaving as the people’s champ. That makes me very proud. Having that closeness, being able to walk around and do the same things that I did before. My mind has never changed, regardless of being champion or not. I was always the same athlete, the same person.

I do put myself among the best in history. Back then, when I first. said I was the best fighter, I got criticized a lot. Today, I say it again: For me, man, I’m the best.”

“It was a good conversation. It went exactly as expected. I want to thank Dana. I want to thank Sean Shelby.

I didn’t come here just wanting to cancel my contract or to be released. I came here because I had a lot on my chest. I had a lot of things I wanted to say and I thought saying them in person was the professional approach and the proper approach to take with them.”

If I had no contracts, if I had nothing binding me, nothing forcing my hand, I don’t think I have the motivation to fight right now. I don’t think that’s something that I’d be doing. Of course, I have a contract. I respect the obligations therein.

Today was just a first conversation, we might be headed down a better path. There’s a lot of transitions happening in the UFC. They are under new ownership. They’re gonna have new ideas and priorities, new methodologies. We’ll see what direction they want to take their business in and we’ll see what that means for me.”