Conor McGregor Accepts Plea Deal, Escapes Felony Charges From Wild Bus Rampage

This morning, Conor McGregor showed up to Kings County Courthouse in Brooklyn and accepted a plea deal for the violent bus attack that he carried out before UFC 223 in April. The court agreed to drop both felony charges against McGregor, and in exchange, McGregor pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct. He will also have to perform a few days of community service, attend an anger management course, pay for the damage he did to the bus, and honor the terms of three two-year protective orders served against him, two of which were given to UFC fighters Michael Chiesa and Ray Borg.

Crucially for him, McGregor’s deal means that he won’t carry a criminal record, which insures that his travel visa won’t be impinged upon. He should be free to fight before the year ends, assuming that he is still interested in MMA fighting.

The April attack went down in the bowels of the Brooklyn Nets arena, where fighters were waiting in UFC buses to return to their hotel after media day. McGregor targeted lightweight rival Khabib Nurmagomedov in the attack, not because the new champion was presumably going to inherit McGregor’s old title belt, but because Nurmagomedov had fucked with McGregor’s teammate Artem Lobov. Borg and Chiesa missed their fights that weekend after getting hit with broken glass, and Lobov was also yanked off the card. McGregor turned himself into police shortly after fleeing the arena, and he announced his intention to work out a plea deal.

UFC despot Dana White has long maintained that he wouldn’t book McGregor until after his legal troubles were behind him, which means we might actually get to see him fight Nurmagomedov in 2018. McGregor hasn’t fought since days after the 2016 election, and it seems that the most logical fight to make would be against the Dagestani champion, either at UFC 230 in New York City in November, or at UFC 232 in Las Vegas in December.