Conor McGregor being sued by woman who accused him of sexual assault is latest in string of lowlights

This isn’t the first time McGregor has been accused of sexual assault. In 2020, McGregor was arrested for attempted sexual assault exposing himself to a woman at a bar in Corsica, but subsequently released by French police while an investigation of the incident continues. In 2019, another woman says McGregor sexually assaulted her in a parked car outside a Dublin bar. That same year, the New York Times reported that McGregor was under investigation for two sexual assaults. According to MMA Weekly, no one knows the status of those investigations or whether this latest lawsuit is one of those two cases or a new case entirely.

To date, no charges have been brought against McGregor in any of the open cases, and he has denied all allegations against him.

Almost every single fighter has at least one debatable decision on their resume. In fairness to McGregor, there’s also background nuance that’s easy to forget. The Irish-born superstar was initially slated to face Rafael Dos Anjos for the UFC Lightweight Championship at UFC 197, but the champion broke his foot, leaving McGregor without an opponent. Nate Diaz stepped in on 13 days’ notice, and McGregor subsequently moved up from 155 pounds to 170 pounds (welterweight), and he got choked out in round two in what became UFC 196’s Fight of the Night.

Ahead of the second fight, Diaz removed himself during the presser for UFC 202, deciding he was done with that shit by walking off stage and flipping McGregor off. McGregor responded by antagonizing him, repeatedly saying, “Shut the fuck up, you’ll do nothing. Get the fuck out of here!” while looking back and forth between the audience and Diaz. (He did refer to the presser as The McGregor Show moments earlier.) McGregor then infamously hurled water bottles at Diaz as Dana White pleaded for him to stop.

Diaz lost the five-round fight by a majority decision, but the result was debatable at the time, and still is. Logically, a third fight was rumored, but still hasn’t occurred, and probably won’t.

In November 2017, Charlie Ward (not that one) scored a knockout over John Redmond toward the end of round one during Bellator 187 in Dublin, Ireland. McGregor stormed the octagon and tackled his teammate, Ward, in celebration. He was lightly shoved away by longtime referee Marc Goddard, who had been trying to restore order because the fight wasn’t done yet. The bout was called but technically shouldn’t have been, and Goddard was attempting to signal the end of the round.

“I was trying to communicate with Charlie Ward and then trying to tell Conor to leave, it wasn’t done yet,” Goddard wrote. “This is when Conor McGregor began firstly his verbal assault in my direction. My only thought at this point was to notify Charlie Ward, and his corner team, of my decision at the time and restore order to the fighting area. Also the condition of [John] Redmond and then subsequently bringing in the [doctor] in the rest period to make a determination. Of course the ensuing mêlée and confusion had completely prevented that from happening, that is the result of the actions of one man.”

The boxing bout between Floyd Mayweather and McGregor took over the summer of 2017, for better or worse. (Yeah, no, it was definitely the latter.) Among other insults hurled at the undefeated Mayweather, most notably, there was, “Dance for me, boy!” and later on calling himself “half Black from the belly button down,” insisting he “isn’t against Black people.”

Less importantly, McGregor lost the bout and was TKO’d in the 10th round of the 12-round late August bout showcased in Las Vegas, Nevada’s T-Mobile Arena.

In Brooklyn’s Barclays Center during the build-up to UFC 223, which Khabib Nurmagomedov headlined, McGregor infamously chucked a dolly through a bus filled with UFC competitors. Nevermind that McGregor had been going after Nurmagomedov, but in the process, he injured Michael Chiesa, who had a scheduled bout with Anthony Pettis that was subsequently canceled, and traumatized UFC Strawweight Champion Rose Namajunas.

Chiesa initially directed a lawsuit toward McGregor, who was arrested for assault and pleaded guilty, while also accusing him of essentially being a clout-chaser. McGregor had also sent a private message to Namajunas, which was rejected, apologizing for his actions in the incident. The event traumatized Namajunas for months, which she discussed openly while reigning as world champion. In September of that year, five months following the incident, it was still a struggle to leave home, according to her coach. In December, Namajunas spoke about the incident again.

“Arriving to the arena itself was hard,” Namajunas said. “Super hard. Because I was super stressed out from the incident on the bus and going back to the same arena with the same elevator and then the noises of the bus kind of took me back to two days earlier. I was super shell shocked from that. Super tense. I was so tense that when Trevor [Wittman] was taping my hands, I was clenching my fist super tight. I turned over my hand and my hand was bleeding. I was like dude, I need to chill out.”

Charges were dropped, but McGregor destroyed a fan’s phone in Miami. He settled a civil lawsuit away from court, and the incident took place in May of 2019.

He was recorded punching an old man in the head in August of 2019, later apologized, and was charged with assault.

And, of course, the well-documented Khabib Nurmagomedov feud. The cringy press conference, calling his wife a towel, the Islamophobia, the many tweets, and countless other things that led to Nurmagomedov choking out McGregor in round four, and then jumping into a crowd to attack Dillon Danis, McGregor’s friend, who is a Bellator MMA combatant.

McGregor didn’t compete in 2019, teased retirement, then late in the year laid out a 2020-plan (didn’t we all) to fight three times, culminating in a rematch with Murmagoedov. It’s unlikely that it happens, but a win over Poirier will only grow the noise several decibels, even in a pandemic.