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The UFC president admitted in an interview with the Jim Rome show on CBS that he’s known about Conor McGregor’s latest bit of bad press for a while now.
Turns out that Conor McGregor’s latest public fracas is actually already old news, at least to UFC president Dana White. Recently released video appears to show the former UFC champion striking a man in a bar, following what seems to have been a disagreement over McGregor’s Proper 12 whiskey brand. But, in an interview with the Jim Rome Show on CBS, White revealed that he had actually known about the incident for quite some time—since it happened back in April (transcript via MMA Fighting).
“That happened in April. I knew that happened, they just got the video. It’s pretty bad,” White said when speaking to Jim Rome on Thursday. “Not allegedly, it’s pretty clear [it’s him]. So apparently this was in a pub in Ireland, and it was an argument over whiskey. Conor has a whiskey now, and it was an argument over the whiskey. And Conor reaches out and hits him with a left hook.
“I don’t know the context of it. I don’t know the entire story, but he punches a guy, an older man, in the face.”
White explained that he hadn’t actually known any of the details of the case, prior to the video being released. “I just knew it happened.” However, even with this latest news, it sounds like the UFC isn’t about to be out of the McGregor business. “When you deal with fighters, guys who fight for a living, there’s always something.”
Rather, White seems to hope that the combat sports superstar will find his way clear of what has become a string of high profile incidents – including his infamous attack on a busload of fighters ahead of UFC 223, the destruction of a fan’s cell phone outside a Miami hotel, and an investigation into more disturbing allegations – and maybe, just maybe, stop getting in trouble.
“You get to a point where you look at a guy like Conor and you look at the bus incident in New York and the camera, the phone, the guy took the picture of him in Miami and he slaps the phone [away from him] — what’s the number?” White said. “What’s it going to cost Conor McGregor before he decides ‘Alright, this isn’t worth it. Enough is enough, I need to stop doing this’.
“The incident in New York cost him millions. Millions he had to pay out. He had to pay the guy with the phone. What’s he going to pay this guy that he hit in the bar? The list just goes on and on. I just don’t know when he wakes up and says ‘I’ve got to stop doing this’.”
No word yet on when McGregor might make a return to the Octagon. A fight between he and Donald Cerrone seemed to be materializing earlier in the year, but has apparently fallen by the wayside—with Cerrone currently preparing to fight Justin Gaethje in mid-September.
Currently, welterweight top contender Jorge Masvidal has been calling for his own ‘red panty night.’ And Anthony Pettis revealed that he had been preparing to fight McGregor at Madison Square Garden on the UFC 244 PPV in November—before ending up with his booking against Nate Diaz, this weekend in Anaheim. Whether it’s any one of those men, or someone else entirely (or maybe no one at all), for now, McGregor seems to be doing all his fighting outside of the cage.