McGregor freed on bail after UFC melee
CONOR McGregor responded to UFC president Dana White’s decision to strip him of his lightweight belt in typically understated fashion: by tweeting an unprintable insult, crashing a pre-fight media event in Brooklyn, New York, chucking a barricade, and prompting a scene of general mayhem that left at least one fighter injured and organisers stunned.
For his trouble, McGregor landed in some.
McGregor turned himself into police on Friday and was arrested and charged with three counts of assault and one count of criminal mischief, after his role in the fracas that left UFC fighter Michael Chiesa in hospital with a facial laceration.
He appeared in court in New York yesterday and was freed on $50,000 bail, Reuters reported.
MMA Fighting reports that Cian Cowley, McGregor’s SBG team-mate, was also charged with one count of assault and one count of criminal mischief over the inci- AP dent. Three matches scheduled for today’s UFC 223 card have been scrapped because of the fracas. Chiesa, who was to fight Anthony Pettis, was cut in the face and was in hospital. He has been deemed unfit to fight by the New York State Athletic Com- mission and the UFC medical team. Ray Borg, a flyweight who was scheduled to battle Brandon Moreno, was also deemed unfit to fight after suffering corneal abrasions. Artem Lobov, a McGregor ally who was apparently part of the incident, was pulled from the card.
It was unclear whether the incident was prompted by White stripping McGregor of his belt, or by previous bad feelings between McGregor’s camp and Khabib Nurmagomedov, scheduled to fight Max Holloway for McGregor’s vacated belt in the main event. Nurmagomedov was filmed in a confrontation with Lobov, the McGregor ally, earlier this week.
On Friday, McGregor and his entourage approached a large vehicle full of fighters that was leaving Barclays Center in Brooklyn after the media event, according to MMA Fighting’s Ariel Helwani and videos posted of the incident. ‘‘Chairs were thrown through the van window and one passenger on the van was injured,’’ Helwani reported, in an apparent reference to Chiesa.
‘‘Conor went bananas and put a beating on the van that we were in,’’ Chiesa’s coach Rick Little told MMAjunkie. ‘‘Mike’s cut up now. He’s got marks on him, for sure. Everything happened so fast, it was just like we got jumped.’’
White called the incident the most despicable thing in UFC history.
‘‘It’s disgusting. And I don’t think anybody is going to be huge McGregor fans after this. I don’t know if he’s on drugs, but to come and do this and act like this?’’ The Washington Post