It was a shameful day in combat sports when the UFC’s biggest star, Conor McGregor started assaulting a bus full of UFC fighters heading back to their hotel rooms after the UFC 223 pre-fight presser.
He was caught on video by several camera phones, and all the evidence was there to show his erratic thuggish behavior.
In the videos you can see him clearly throwing a dolly shattering the side of the bus window, in that seat was fighter Michael Chiesa who was scheduled to fight Anthony Pettis on Saturday, he suffered several lacerations from the shattered glass, forcing him to pull out of the fight.
Ray Borg also suffered injuries some of the shattered glass went into his eye impairing his vision and had to be pulled from the card.
This whole entire situation stemmed from a video that went online of McGregor teammate Artem Lobov being confronted by Khabib Nurmagomedov and his crew earlier this week.
McGregor showed up to New York to try and crash the UFC 223 fight presser but was blocked by security, so he waited until the fighters went on the bus to try and confront Khabib who is scheduled to fight Max Holloway for the vacant UFC lightweight title.
This type of situation isn’t a good look for the sport of Mixed Martial Arts and will make opponents of the sport look down on it even more.
Conor thinks it’s cool to act like a street thug and start trouble. He let his act get to his head, he was just a humble young plumber from Ireland and then when he got some fame he became a wannabe gangster.
Much of the public have a negative view of Fighters of being violent and from the hood, so presenting this type of behavior outside of the Octagon or the boxing ring reinforces their belief.
McGregor got rich fighting Floyd Mayweather Jr. in a boxing match that sold over 4 million PPV buys at nearly 100 bucks a pop. He went away with close to 100 million, and just had a baby boy, and this is the way he chooses to live his life as a grown adult?
That money he made from Mayweather could be gone soon if those fighters on the bus choose to sue him for damages, especially after being pulled from a fight they will have a legit case at being compensated because this is their livelihood and Conor denied them from earning a living on Saturday by injuring them with his violent temper tantrum.
If he wanted to get payback at Khabib for putting his hand on Artem’s neck, he should have waited until after the UFC 223 main event and if Khabib won he should have went into the cage and called him out, this is professional prize fighting, you have a family to take care of grow up and be a professional settle your beefs inside the cage or the boxing ring not the street.
After what McGregor did, he deserves to be banned from UFC and Boxing, for how long will be up to the commissions. If he gets away with just a slap on the wrist it will make the sport look bad they need to set an example by disciplining this type violent behavior.
If gets banned from competing in the UFC that the boxing promoters follow suit and not work with him either, but the sad thing is the almighty dollar speaks louder than principle, and some greedy boxing promoter will probably host a boxing match with Conor in Ireland or something and make tons of money off of it.
There is no excuse for this and let us just hope Conor McGregor matures for his family who love him dearly. If something happens to him and he crosses the wrong path and gets locked up for a long time he could leave his son without a father in his life and that is something he should think about before he wakes up every morning thinking acting like a thug is cool.
I am an avid fan of boxing and video games. My first fight of memory was watching Prince Naseem Hamed destroy Kevin Kelly. I enjoy all aspects of the sport. My favorite current boxer is Manny “Pacman” Pacquiao. My favorite boxing match is Diego Corrales vs. Jose Luis Castillo 1. I love watching boxing on Pay-Per-View more than being there live because you can really enjoy and watch the action from the best view.