Joe Rogan: Conor McGregor had a 'pissing contest' with the UFC and lost

You can't fight City Hall. Or the UFC, apparently.

UFC color commentator Joe Rogan said Tuesday on ESPN Radio's "The Dan Le Batard Show" that Conor McGregor took on the UFC during this recent saga and came up empty.

"Conor is not dumb," Rogan said. "They had a pissing contest and Conor lost. It's really that simple. He just decided that he was going to put his foot down and tell the UFC he wasn't doing any media obligations and the UFC said, 'Well, that's not how it works.'"

The UFC pulled McGregor from UFC 200 last month, because McGregor did not want to fly to Las Vegas to fulfill media obligations, which included a photo shoot, commercial and three-city tour. McGregor said that he wanted to focus on his training camp for Nate Diaz and was willing to do a part of the tour as well as more media a few weeks later.

In between, McGregor tweeted that he was retiring and that he was back on the UFC 200 card. Neither of those things were true.

Rogan said that the McGregor-Diaz rematch is likely be rebooked for UFC 202 in August. Diaz beat McGregor via second-round submission at UFC 196 in March, which was the highest grossing UFC pay-per-view of all time.

"You don't win those things against the UFC," Rogan said. "They don't want to be in a contest with you. So if you engage in a contest with them, they have to set a precedent that they're not there to engage in contests with fighters. They're there to promote fights. That's what they do. And when you're promoting a fight, you have to do your media obligations. That's their position and I understand their position. And honestly, I understand his position, too. He doesn't want to have to do media, he just wants to prepare for a big fight and he thinks he's a big enough star that the fight is gonna sell itself. The UFC disagrees and that's where they had an impasse."

Instead of McGregor and Diaz at UFC 200, the new main event will pit blood rivals Daniel Cormier and Jon Jones against one another for the light heavyweight title. Cormier is the champion, but Jones never lost the belt in the cage. And fans will still likely get to see Diaz-McGregor 2 before long.

"It's unfortunate, because I would have loved to see [McGregor] at UFC 200, but it doesn't matter," Rogan said. "UFC 200 is gonna be stacked and whatever fight card they would up eventually doing this Conor McGregor vs. Nate Diaz fight, it's gonna be big, too. It doesn't matter."