Conor McGregor is known as The Notorious One for many reasons, with one of them being his tendency to ‘paint outside the lines’ so to speak. That can mean a lot of different things when it comes to a UFC fighter, but in Conor’s case, his eccentric nature doesn’t always lead to good results.
We’ve seen a few incidents go wrong for the Irishman in the last year or so, and over the last few weeks, we’ve been subjected to yet another ‘dropped the ball’ kind of moment from McGregor.
We are, of course, referring to his behaviour at Bellator 187 when he jumped the cage following teammate Charlie Ward’s victory and assaulted not one, but two senior officials.
To many fans, it seemed as if the two-weight world champion wasn’t actually all that interested in the apology portion of his post, and instead, he was coming up with a variety of excuses as to why he behaved in the manner that he did.
Whichever way you look at it things aren’t going well for Mr McGregor from a public image standpoint, especially when you consider that many fans are disappointed he now won’t be headlining the UFC 219 card that will close out 2017.
Conor has always had this side to him in the eyes of his doubters and it’ll be a long time until people start to change their views in that sense, especially after this latest stunt.
The Irishman has clearly gotten into the habit of thinking that he can do what he wants when he wants, and unfortunately, it’s starting to appear as if the McGregor brand is indeed bigger than the Ultimate Fighting Championship itself.
In terms of the fight game, we can only hope that he’ll be back inside the octagon soon, likely to defend his Lightweight Championship in a unification bout against Tony Ferguson. That’s what the fans want to see, that’s what the UFC wants to see, and soon enough we’ll discover whether or not Conor’s new found fortune has turned him off the idea of fighting for a living.
When it comes to the apology, though, unfortunately, it seems as if this whole thing will be swept under the rug without so much as a comment from the higher-ups. Case and point: the UFC have moved at a snail’s pace in regards to commenting on the incident, and yet with Volkan Oezdemir, they commented within hours of the story breaking.
