Irish media's brutal reaction to Conor McGregor beating
The chaos that erupted after a fiery UFC 229 will the talking point of the event for years to come, but there was also a fight that played out that night – and Conor McGregor lost, badly.
McGregor is probably the first athlete that comes to mind when you think of an Irish sporting superstar, but it seems his home media hasn’t bought into the hype.
Instead, they’ve focused on the harsh reality of McGregor’s fourth round submission to the undefeated Khabib Nurmagomedov – and it’s not pretty.
A plethora of local Irish papers absolutely blasted McGregor for his anti-climatic return to the UFC, after a two-year hiatus from the fight game.
The loss makes McGregor’s recent record stand at 2-2 in his last four MMA fights, and 2-3 if one includes his 2017 boxing match with Floyd Mayweather.
Though McGregor became the first man in Nurmagomedov’s 27-fight career to win a round from him, he was thoroughly thrashed and wasn’t really in the fight.
Behind the money, the trash-talk and the massive personality of McGregor is a relatively poor form of late, and the Irish media let the Dubliner know about it.
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The Irish Daily Mail led their MMA section with the headline, “Sad McGregor facing the grim reality of life as a has-been” – with a brutal excerpt to follow:
“McGregor has been absolutely central in the charge towards the low point the UFC has now reached,” Shane McGrath wrote.
“Many loud in sharing their abhorrence at the pitiful aftermath of Conor McGregor’s defeat spent years indulging and excusing the wretched behaviour of their hero, and insisting the sport and the organisation that made him rich and famous and vulgar, deserved to be treated with the seriousness accorded to more established purists. They were wrong then and they should be ignored now.”
The Irish Times was less extensive in their coverage, but were still just as hard-hitting, targeting McGregor’s overall fight plan and urging him to forget the ‘myth’ he has built his legacy on.
“What is striking is that there were no surprises in what the Russian tried to do, and yet McGregor seemed incapable of stopping it,” Philip O’Connor wrote.
One of the more damning articles was published in The Independent by Eamonn Sweeney, absolutely ripping into McGregor, after publishing “The humiliation of Conor McGregor” on the front page:
“He’s no elite sportsman and now he has got his comeuppance. He was humiliated,” Sweeney wrote.
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“McGregor has had five fights in the last three years and lost three of them convincingly. That makes the national fuss look a bit silly at this stage.
“Watching the build-up to the main event, it doesn’t take long to twig that this is essentially a sport aimed at dumbasses.
“Fair enough, the stupid need entertainment too, but there’s not much in it for the rest of us. MMA is a sporting version of Love Island. With even tighter shorts.
“MMA is such a small world, you could call it the Mickey Mouse Association.”
The Irish Daily Mirror the day after the fight led with the headline, “Notoriously bad”:
“McGregor’s boasts fell flat against Khabib before all hell broke loose in Sin City,” wrote Martin Domin.
The intense backlash from his national press offers a glum insight into McGregor’s stance in his own country – but you can guarantee his fans don’t see things in the same light.
It will be an interesting scenario if McGregor’s plans to stage his re-match with Khabib in Ireland come to fruition.
What McGregor’s teammate did to provoke Khabib’s rampage
Conor McGregor’s coach has opened up about what Dillon Danis did before Khabib Nurmagomedov went berserk.
In crazy scenes after Khabib made McGregor tap during the fourth round of their grudge match at UFC 229, the Russian fighter launched himself out of the Octagon and straight at McGregor’s teammate in the front row.
Many commentators have since theorised that Khabib was enraged by something Danis must have said.
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TMZ reported on Tuesday that Danis called Khabib a “f***ing Muslim rat” in between the second and third rounds of the fight, citing a ringside fan.
However McGregor’s coach John Kavanagh has denied those claims.
“I was standing beside Dillon. I didn’t see what he did but I could hear. He didn’t say anything,” Kavanagh said on the Joe Rogan Experience.
However Kavanagh believes a slight gesture might have ticked Khabib off, or something Danis said on social media before the fight.
“When I watched it back I could see him beckon (Nurmagomedov) on,” Kavanagh continued.
“It’s just stupid end of fight stuff. But it didn’t justify that level of response.
“Maybe there was something else in the build up. Dillon is a little bit of trouble online.”
But despite the drama, Kavanagh didn’t take too much exception to Khabib’s actions.
“It wasn’t that big of a deal to me what Khabib did. It just really wasn’t,” he said.
“I hope (Nevada State Athletic Commission) is lenient. Not just so we can get a rematch. I just love watching him fight.
“I can stretch myself to understand his reaction.”
with Yahoo Sports US.