It’s been a wild year for MMA and the UFC in 2017. After this month’s craziness, it looks like we haven’t seen the last of the drama just yet…
Current UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor is all over the headlines this week. Perhaps not for the best of reasons, but the MMA world is abuzz with chatter about ‘The Notorious.’
News broke yesterday about a rumored pub brawl, and McGregor was at the center of it all. Worse yet, the individuals who were allegedly ‘battered’ by McGregor have strong ties to the criminal underworld in Ireland.
You can read the full story here, or here’s the rundown: Irish papers and media outlets reported an ‘Irish sports star’ was involved in a late night punchup in Ireland. Multiple patrons of the pub claim to have seen McGregor ‘box the head off’ a drunken young man.
McGregor also struck a man in his 50’s, reported to be the father of a feared Irish mob hitman.
Woodwork Stories
Then, from all over the place, came stories of McGregor impregnating random women in Ireland. Over on the Ireland Reddit sub, members were alleging McGregor owed 900K to an infamous Irish drug king.
Simply bizarre, and McGregor’s cryptic Instagram post only added fuel to the flames in light of the recent reports. While attending a media scrum this week, UFC president Dana White compared McGregor to one of his other biggest stars, Jon Jones:
Dana White’s Response
“These guys make money and that’s it. Fighting is the worst. Try to get up and get punched in the face every day when you’ve got $100 million in the bank. Money changes everything for a lot of people.”
“He’s a young, rich kid who is a god in Ireland. That’s not the healthiest environment either. It’s all part of it. I don’t know if you guys remember in the very beginning with Jon Jones. There’s no doubt the talent was there. I used to go, ‘The guy is talented, but he’s young, he’s rich, he’s the king of the world now. Hopefully he can keep it together.’ That was way before the crazy shit started to happen. And there it is. It happens.”
Dana goes on to say he doesn’t believe the rumors of the pub brawl:
“I don’t think it’s true.” White told the media. “Because if it was true, it would be big. Conor can walk down the street and it’s big news now. If this were true, I just have to believe it would be off-the-charts crazy.”
“If it’s true, we’ll end up finding out. I can’t chase all these things around. If it’s true, we’ll get it figured out and we’ll go from there.”
“He was being dealt with by the head of the ABC. We were gonna fight him, regardless of what [McGregor’s manager] Audie [Attar] says, we were working on a fight for him at the end of the year. And he’s just not ready. Listen, Conor might never fight again. The guy’s got a f*cking hundred million dollars.” said Dana White in regards to Conor fighting again.
“When he travels, he’s got friggin’ people for days with him. When you make that kind of money, you’re that famous and you’re a professional athlete, you’re gonna have an overload of cling-ons.”
“We need to figure that out. Right now, with him it’s not about defend or vacate. We’re working on a new deal with him right now.”
