‘Disgusting’ McGregor charged over fracas
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, Reuters reported.
He appeared in court in New York yesterday and was freed on US$50,000 (NZ$68,000) bail, Reuters reported.
MMA Fighting reports that Cian Cowley, McGregor’s SBG teammate, was also charged with one count of assault and one count of criminal mischief over the incident.
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 Commission and the UFC medical team. Ray Borg, a flyweight who was scheduled to battle Brandon Moreno, also was deemed unfit to fight after suffering corneal abrasions. Artem Lobov, a McGregor ally who was apparently part of the incident, was also 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 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 earlier this week.
On Friday, McGregor and his entourage approached a large vehicle full of fighters that was leaving Barclays Centre 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.
Videos posted to social media show a chaotic scene, with at least one guardrail being flung and general disorder.
‘‘Conor went bananas and put a beating on the van that we were in,’’ Chiesa’s coach Rick Little told MMAjunkie. ‘‘A million security guards had to restrain him.’’
Little told the site that his fighter had been cut by shattered glass. And some media members at the arena reported that the target of McGregor’s ire was apparently Nurmagomedov.
White, meanwhile, called the incident the most despicable thing in UFC history.
‘‘You want to grab 30 [expletive] friends and come down here and do what you did today?’’ White said in a video posted by ESPN’s Brett Okamoto. ‘‘It’s disgusting. And I don’t think anybody is going to be huge Conor McGregor fans after this. I don’t know if he’s on drugs or what his deal is, but to come and do this and act like this?’’
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