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Conor McGregor is mad people are comparing his 50 Cent-esque first pitch to 50 Cent

It wasn't the worst outcome of his athletic life this year, but Conor McGregor probably got a little more laughter than he wanted when he threw a first pitch at a Chicago Cubs game this week.

The pitch sailed several feet away from the strike zone and quickly triggered a familiar social media cascade. We're well-practiced when it comes to bad celebrity first pitches: point, laugh, compare to 50 Cent. As it turns out, McGregor has a problem with the last part of that process.

The former UFC champion posted an irate rant on Instagram containing a screencap of what he believes to be an offensive question, "Who had the worst first pitch? Conor McGregor or 50 Cent?" McGregor not only said his pitch was beyond compare when it came to baseball's quintessential bad first pitch, he claimed the pitch was "bar the accuracy, the most powerful and fastest first pitch of any of these other athletes/ artist over the years."

With the caveats that we know McGregor is playing a character here and craves attention more than anything else, it's still worth pointing out some things: a) we don't know how much baseball McGregor has actually watched, but the point of baseball is to throw it in the strike zone and b) there have been far faster first pitches over the years.

Here's the actual Instagram post, which consists of the offending tweet, tape of the two first pitches and, because this is Conor McGregor, two pictures of his whiskey brand:

And here's the full Instagram caption, which just gets more unintelligible as it goes on:

The audacity to compare mine with this p***! Picture to picture alone buries this. Mine, bar the accuracy, was the most powerful and fastest first pitch of any of these other athletes/ artist over the years. No comparison. Smoke them up and down that Forbes I do. Get Messi over. Smoked. Cris. Smoked. Federer. Doubled. All time Most Power! Put me in the Wrigley hall of fame for that rocket launch. Beside some of that nice red brick. Mahogany Oak Frame. Wimbledon lines in the grass. The great Wrigley Field reminds me of the grounds on my land in Ireland. Impeccable.

Anyway back to the pitch.. Venom. Composure. Balance! The gold bar of Patek almost came flying off me it was that fast and powerful. I’d take it back to @patekphilippe for adjusting but this watch is now discontinued. A rare. I Bought for 80k in Weirs jeweler of Ireland and today it is worth close to 500k. And going up. Fifty has a nice hublot too. Big Bang. Small bucks 50cent. One has power. One is the director of media relations for some show called power.

You know what it is.

The Mac in Chicago! @tidlsport #tidltour

Was Conor McGregor's really as bad as 50 Cent's?

One Twitter account, the venerable Pitching Ninja, was kind enough to make a side-by-side comparison of McGregor's and 50 Cent's first pitches.

In the video, you can see the two took a similar path to opposite mistakes. 50 Cent lets his weight fall backward and steps way to his right, but the ball slips out before he can come around and flies weakly to the left. McGregor also loses his balance and steps wide right, but manages to hold onto the ball, which follows his body's direction to the third base line.

McGregor's other mistake was wearing a full suit for his pitch, which prevents him from lifting his arms above his shoulders:

McGregor's first pitch is probably the better effort, but let's be real. Neither of these guys should want us to be bringing up these pitches at all.

Incredibly, this isn't the first time McGregor has been steamed over people laughing at him over his non-MMA athletic failures. He did basically the same thing when he visited the Dallas Cowboys: try to throw football, look foolish doing it, go viral and get mad at someone for comparing him to another bad throw (in that case Blake Bortles).