Yahoo Sports The disturbing truth about Conor McGregor's latest attack on Khabib Nurmagomedov
Conor McGregor is despicable. There’s no other way to say it.
Well, maybe there is: He’s vile. He’s heartless, soulless and his ego knows no bounds.
What you are seeing now from the former two-division UFC champion is the real man, the guy he effectively hid for several years as he was making a remarkable rise from poverty to the top of his sport.
On Monday, McGregor put out a tweet, which he at least had the common sense to delete, about Khabib Nurmagomedov’s late father, Abdulmanap.
There has long been animosity between Nurmagomedov and McGregor, of course, begun by McGregor.
But McGregor’s tweet in response to a tweet from Nurmagomedov, the now-retired former UFC lightweight champion, shows how low McGregor has sunk.
After Dustin Poirier’s win over McGregor in the main event of UFC 264 on July 10 in Las Vegas, Nurmagomedov tweeted, in part, “Good always defeats evil.”
Now, one could take the view, myopic as that would be, that Nurmagomedov started this most recent dust-up. But no one with an ounce of class and/or decency would respond as McGregor did on Monday.
He wrote, “Covid is good and father is evil?”
McGregor didn’t mention Abdulmanap Nurmagomedov by name, but that’s unmistakably who he was referring to. Khabib always refers to his dad, who died of COVID-19 complications last year, as “father.”
Prior to their 2018 fight, McGregor hurled insults at Nurmagomedov’s wife and father and insulted his religion. Every single one of those were out-of-bounds, but because McGregor is a terrific fighter and people wanted to see the bout against Nurmagomedov, they were largely ignored.
Sadly, it’s probably going to be largely ignored again, though props to coach Firas Zahabi of Tri-Star for speaking out. In a video he did on YouTube breaking down UFC 264, Zahabi took direct aim at McGregor’s disgusting public behavior.
“If Conor McGregor has one true friend in this world … maybe he’s just surrounded by people who just want his prestige and money and they just want what they can get from him,” Zahabi said. “But if he has a single true friend in this world, that true friend is going to take him behind closed doors and tell him, ‘Look, the way you’re behaving, it’s stupid. You’re making yourself look bad. You’re embarrassing us, your family, your friends.’ It’s just a humiliating way for a true martial artist, a warrior to behave.
“He’s going after kids now. Now, if that was anybody else, if that was a guy on a prelim card, we would all be like, ‘Kick this guy off the roster. Kick this guy out of the UFC. No, no, no.’ But because it’s Conor McGregor, you can’t say that. It’s Conor McGregor, he’s the poster boy. He’s the one who sells all the tickets. No. There’s no pass for that.”
He’s right, of course, but don’t hold your breath expecting the UFC to take action.
It’s a fighting sport and the athletes can handle their differences in the ring. But if you take that stance, don’t spew the pablum about martial arts being about respect and honor, because you can’t have it both ways.
The sad thing is, McGregor is a brilliant promoter. It’s how he went from being on government assistance as an apprentice plumber before he joined the UFC to becoming No. 1 on Forbes’ list of highest-paid athletes over the past year.
There are lines that cannot be crossed and bringing fighters’ families into it is first among those lines. McGregor called Poirier’s wife, Jolie, a “ho” after UFC 264 among less than other complimentary things.
Why he’s doing this is anyone’s guess, but a good one is that because he makes so much money for so many people, no one wants to tell him how bad he’s making himself look.
He’s no longer the fighter he once was, and is 1-3 in his last four MMA bouts and 1-4 in his last five fights overall. That includes a boxing match against Floyd Mayweather in 2017 that sold over 4.4 million pay-per-views.
So perhaps his recent rants are an attempt to keep himself relevant.
Instead of relevant, though, these types of public comments are just making him more despised. Of course, this is a guy who attacked a bus that Nurmagomedov was riding on. He’s the guy who punched an elderly man in a bar. He smashed the phone of a fan attempting to take a picture of him.
He’s also the guy that published reports have linked to multiple sexual assaults in Ireland, so nasty tweets are probably the least of his problems.
It’s disturbing, though, that this continues unabated and uncalled on.
The folks who hang with him will still get their money, but it is little more than blood money now.
He’s an intelligent guy who has done a lot of good with his money. But he’s undoing all the good he’s done by acting like a gangster and giving the impression it’s all right.
It’s not all right. It’s despicable and, increasingly, it’s the real Conor McGregor.
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