When Conor McGregor stood in the dock for his civil rape trial last week, the controversial MMA fighter was receiving the kind of global media attention he had always craved. Just not for the reasons he would have wanted.
In court, the 12-person jury found him liable for the rape and sexual assault of Nikita Hand, and awarded her £208,000 in damages. This was the latest nail hammered into a career which has been marred by sporting controversies, sexual misbehaviour and appallingly thuggish behaviour.
The circumstances which brought McGregor before the civil court were as tawdry as people had come to expect from the Dublin brawler. One Friday night in December 2018, McGregor had booked a hotel suite where he planned to finish the night. After messaging Nikita Hand on social media, he took her back to his hotel.
McGregor’s team claimed that he was the victim of a ruthless gold digger. Ms Hand’s team on the other hand, pointed out that such was the ferocity of the attack, her tampon had to be surgically removed afterwards. When she addressed the media outside the court room, her words resonated with many Irish women: ‘I want to show my daughter (Freya) and every other young girl and boy that you can stand up for yourself if something happens to you, no matter who the person is, and justice will be done.’
The verdict came as no surprise to all but his most slavish followers. And the reaction afterwards has shown how happy the people of Dublin are to wash their hands of the star.
McGregor was the classic rags to riches to story. From the working-class enclave of Crumlin, he had, through a genuinely impressive combination of guts, determination and a flair for self promotion turned himself into a global brand with an estimated net worth of close to £600 million (with typical modesty he claims he is worth ‘closer to a billion’).
Only a fraction of that figure has been accrued through fighting. Instead, McGregor has made immensely lucrative investments and endorsements. Three years after he established his own brand of whiskey, Proper No. Twelve, (named after Crumlin’s postcode), he sold his majority stake to Proximo Spirits for roughly $600 million.
He also has commercial interests in several luxury clothing brands and famously bought a pub, the Black Forge, in the area he grew up in. But it was in another pub nearby, the Marble Arch, where locals really began to dislike McGregor. In 2019 he was caught on camera sucker punching a local punter who had refused a free shot of his whiskey.
McGregor’s political aspirations have drawn scorn too. Like a young Alexander who has run out of pubs to buy and old men to beat up, in September this year McGregor set his sights on becoming President of Ireland, stating with admirable certainty ‘I am the only logical choice.’
Warming to his theme, which may or may not have occurred while testing a batch of his own whiskey, he informed Ireland that: ‘As President, I hold the power to summon the Dail as well as dissolve it… I have all the answers the people of Ireland seek.’
He was dragged further into the political mire in November, when the Dublin riots saw police cars and trams burned out. McGregor tweeted: ‘Ireland, we are at war!’ And: ‘There is grave danger among us in Ireland that should never be here in the first place…. Make change or make way. Ireland for the victory!’
As the Irish government desperately scrambled to find out the cause of the riots, politicians accused McGregor of incitement and the Gardai refused to rule out investigating him.
Yet while the chattering classes sneered, McGregor was picking up a large and devoted following among young disaffected men. The fact that the likes of the professional misogynist Andrew Tate defended his Irish friend shows the sewers in which he now swims. His supporters have convinced themselves that their hero is the victim of a deep state hit job designed to ruin his chances of becoming president, which is as absurd as it sounds. Given McGregor’s consistently irrational behaviour, it’s not impossible that he announces a presidential run next year. It would be pointless, but typical.
As things stand McGregor is finished in Ireland. Within 24 hours of the recent verdict, liquor stores had removed all his products from their shelves. Former regulars were boycotting his pubs. Much his vast fan base had unfollowed him on social media. Most humiliatingly of all, the gyms and fight clubs which held him up as a role model removed his posters and painted over his murals. He is a busted flush in Ireland.
If he had any common sense, McGregor would simply retire from public life, and stop trying to feed his ravenous ego. But as even a casual observer of the man who has brought shame to Dublin’s working class will tell you, the words ‘common sense’ and ‘Conor McGregor’ rarely go together.
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