If you know nothing about mixed martial artist Conor McGregor besides “hey, there’s the angry Irish guy who’s good at punching,” know that he is an excellent salesman, capable of raising intrigue for his fights at any cost — mostly by way of acting like a giant cock. Truly, there is nothing McGregor will not say, no slight to his reputation he will not suffer if it gets people paying to watch him, thus making him richer. But on Thursday, McGregor did something very dumb: He committed an actual crime in the service of hyping up a fight, putting his fighting career in jeopardy.
As a promoter, McGregor has taken a lot of lessons from professional wrestling, in which the wrestlers act ridiculously ahead of a match in order to raise enthusiasm, thus guaranteeing a bigger payday. (McGregor has specifically cribbed a lot of cues and mannerisms from the iconic Ric Flair.) Though McGregor is not fighting on Saturday’s UFC 223 card, he showed up to a media event at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, with the intention of starting some shit with Khabib Nurmagomedov, a fighter who is scheduled to throw down with Max Holloway this weekend. (Or was, at least: Holloway was pulled today because he couldn’t safely make weight.)
McGregor hasn’t competed in MMA since 2016 (he’s gotten insanely rich since then; remember last year’s fight with Floyd Mayweather?) and it was recently announced he would be stripped of his lightweight title on account of inactivity. The winner of the Nurmagomedov fight will be awarded the vacant title, much to McGregor’s chagrin. As such, there’s been tensions between the involved camps: Earlier this week, Nurmagomedov and his team had a heated confrontation with Artem Lobov, another fighter and associate of McGregor.
So, figure out this calculus: McGregor and Nurmagomedov have real-life beef, for multiple reasons — the stripped title, the confrontation with one of his friends. (It’s very much you go after my guy, I go after you.) McGregor and Nurmagomedov could also fight this year for the lightweight title, if Nurmagomedov won this weekend. And so McGregor decided to hype up this potential fight — like a pro wrestling promoter would — by bum rushing the Barclays event, causing a scene that climaxed with him shattering the window of a bus containing a bunch of UFC fighters. Except the resultant spray of glass was enough to injure a couple of fighters — two of whom were pulled from the UFC card, because of their injuries. Now, McGregor has been charged with assault, after turning himself into police last night.
“In the history of the UFC, this is definitely the worst thing that’s happened,” said UFC president Dana White, who is also an expert at leveraging real life intrigue into pay-per-view money. He said that McGregor’s future with UFC may be in doubt — another classic “will he or won’t he?” wrestling-style teaser, except for the fact that McGregor definitely crossed a line. The point of pro wrestling is that it’s staged — tempers may flare, but they’re not actually trying to hurt each other out there. In causing physical and financial harm to his peers, McGregor got way, way too real, and may be punished for it. Will any of the injured fighters press charges? Will he do any jail time? Will he fight again? Who can say?
Then again, if McGregor comes out of the moment relatively unscathed — he’s still insanely rich and connected, which means something could work out — and raring for a fight, the money could be bigger than ever. Nurmagomedov, the target of the attack, seemed to sense the potential. “To be honest, I don’t want him to go to jail,” he said after the incident. “We have to fight.”
Correction: The nature of Holloway’s withdrawal from UFC 223 has been clarified.
