Video emerged of UFC superstar Conor McGregor punching an old man in a bar after what looks like he rejected an offer to drink.
The incident happened on April 6, at The Marble Arch Pub in Dublin, Ireland, McGregor’s hometown, TMZ reported. It’s just the latest violent incidents that McGregor has engaged in outside of the UFC octagon.
Security video shows McGregor walk into the bar. The people sitting there drinking are mostly white-haired, older men. Conor appears to pour out multiple glasses of an alcoholic drink. It looks like he is trying to give men glasses of his signature Proper No. Twelve whiskey.
A man sitting to Conor’s right moves the glass McGregor sets out away from him. McGregor slams another glass in front of him, which he also moves away. McGregor appears to be saying something to the man, with younger men standing between and around them. It’s not clear if the younger men are his security guards or just other bar patrons.
McGregor then launches a punch at the older man’s head. The younger men pull McGregor away. The security footage obtained by TMZ is cut at certain points, and there is no audio, so the situation isn’t 100 percent clear. But that hasn’t stopped many from weighing in on the matter.
UFC Fighters React
UFC lightweight championship belt holder Khabib Nurmagomedov, who defeated McGregor at their last fight, said McGregor must face consequences.
“This is like really really bad thing. Even if old guy like this guy on video, even if this guy punch your face ten times, you can’t punch this guy’s face. You can’t. This is like impossible. We have to respect old people,” Nurmagomedov told TMZ. “I think like these people have to go jail, brother. They have to go jail.”
“This is very bad for sport. Something he doing good for sport, but right now he without his mind. He lose his mind,” Nurmagomedov added. “If today he punches old guy, what’s going to happen tomorrow? Nobody know this.”
American UFC welterweight fighter Jorge Masvidal, who recently made the record books for delivering the fastest knockout in UFC history, also spoke about the matter.
“I don’t know what happened there but it didn’t look right. That dude is maybe like 60-years-old and you punch him in the head and he wasn’t looking at you? I don’t know how that sits with me,” Masvidal told Submission Radio. “I want to know more about it because all I saw was a quick clip of the video. And, it just didn’t make no sense.
“I don’t know maybe this guy disrespected Conor, spit on him, or some [expletive] that I didn’t see on the camera, but the 10-second clip that I saw just didn’t look right.”
Previous UFC lightweight champion Anthony Pettis had more sympathy for McGregor.
“I just want to know what the guy said, honestly. Obviously, don’t hit people in the face, but I am a fighter and I know how drunk people treat us,” Pettis told MMA Fighting. “We’re so accessible to people. We’re not like NBA, NFL athletes where we have this huge entourage. UFC puts us out in front of everybody.”
Police have not arrested McGregor. He previously faced charges for knocking the phone out of the hands of a fan who was recording him and stomping on it, in a Miami incident that happened a month before the bar incident. Charges were dropped but McGregor settled a civil suit with the owner of the phone, TMZ reported.
Last year, McGregor threw a tantrum at a bus full of UFC fighters in Brooklyn. He threw a dolly at the bus’s window and smashed it, injuring fighters onboard. Some fighters were pulled out of upcoming fights because of injuries from the broken glass, ESPN reported.
McGregor managed to avoid felony charges in that incident.
