Even if you do not follow the UFC, you have seen or heard that the former UFC lightweight and featherweight champion attacking a bus carrying over a dozen fighters and cornermen on its exit from the bowels of the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn, New York, site of tomorrow’s UFC 223 event.
The main event features Khabib Nurmagomedov facing Al Iaquinta for the undisputed lightweight title that McGregor was stripped of last week by UFC President Dana White, due to McGregor’s lack of defending the title. Iaquinta steps in after Toon Ferguson, Max Holloway, and Paul Felder were all inserted, then later removed for various reasons.
One of the bouts on the undercard featured featherweight Artem Lobov facing Alex Caceres. Lobov had a run-in with Nurmagomedov within the past few weeks, which led back to McGregor, as Conor and Lobov are friends. Many hoped to see Conor face Khabib in 2018, but McGregor was still living off the riches of his boxing match with Floyd Mayweather last year, and the UFC was a dot in his rearview mirror.
Fast forward to media day yesterday, and McGregor decided he was going to get 20 of his friends (or posse) together, and attack the bus as it was trying to pull away. McGregor threw a dolly through the side window directly behind the driver, and then a pair of folding chairs at the front windshield. The driver was able to slowly and safely back the bus into the enclosure, where two steel doors closed the bus in. It was eerily reminiscent in that scene from Zero Dark Thirty where Jessica Chastain’s car comes under gunfire as she is leaving for work one morning in Pakistan.
Lobov was immediately pulled from the card for his involvement as part of McGregor’s entourage. Ultimate Fighter lightweight winner Michael Chiesa received several facial lacerations from the broken glass of McGregor’s window break, and was pulled from the card by the New York State Athletic Commission, despite his desire to remain on the card. A flyweight match between Ray Borg and Brandon Moreno was also scrapped, after Borg got some of the dust from the glass in his eye. The attack was also reported by White to have emotionally roughed up current UFC Women’s Strawweight Champion Rose Namajunas, on the heels of her highly-anticipated rematch with former champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk.
McGregor’s plane was grounded once the New York Police Department found him on the security camera footage, and he was asked to surrender himself for questioning. Earlier today, the NYPD formally charged McGregor with three counts of misdemeanor assault, and one count of misdemeanor criminal mischief.
McGregor has basically killed his UFC career, and likely any chance of getting into boxing or the WWE full time either. We have seen how quick the WWE cuts off guys on their current roster after running into criminal activity (see Eric Arndt and Rich Swann). Jones has personal demons where he cannot get out of his own way. What McGregor did was a criminal act that could have cost the UFC millions of dollars if certain fights cannot proceed. What if Namajunas has some sort of breakdown when she returns back to Barclay’s for the weigh ins today, or preparing for the fight tomorrow afternoon? Many fans are more interested in the women’s title fight than the Khabib/Ferguson main event, based on their first encounter.
Fans got behind McGregor really quick when he was trying to take the featherweight title off Jose Aldo, because Aldo had been champion for so long that it was becoming boring. Now his act is more Hollywood than anything Vince McMahon’s writers could come up with at WWE, especially with this also being Wrestlemania weekend.
I also find it hilarious that Nate Diaz is taking to Twitter to kick McGregor when he’s down. Diaz may never fight again in the UFC either, but namely because he can’t lay off the weed.
This also will get much worse for McGregor, as he is only in the United States with a work visa. McGregor is not married, and his girlfriend Dee Devlin is also from his native Ireland. A conviction on any of his four charges will likely result in his visa being revoked.
-JC24