Conor McGregor responded to UFC President Dana White's decision to strip him of his lightweight belt in typically understated fashion: by tweeting an unprintable insult, crashing a pre-fight media event in Brooklyn, New York, chucking a barricade and prompting a scene of general mayhem that left at least one fighter injured and organisers stunned.
For his trouble, McGregor landed in some.
McGregor turned himself into police on Thursday (Friday NZ Time) and was arrested and charged with three counts of assault and one count of criminal mischief after his role in the fracas that left UFC fighter Michael Chiesa in the hospital with a facial laceration, Reuters reported.
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}He appeared in court in New York on Friday (Saturday NZ time) and was freed on $50,000 bail, Reuters reported.
MMA Fighting reports that Cian Cowley, McGregor's SBG teammate, also was charged with one count of assault and one count of criminal mischief over the incident.
Three matches scheduled for Saturday's (Sunday NZT) UFC 223 card have been scrapped because of the fracas.
Chiesa, who was to fight Anthony Pettis, was cut in the face and was in the hospital; he has been deemed unfit to fight by the New York State Athletic Commission and the UFC medical team.
Ray Borg, a flyweight who was scheduled to battle Brandon Moreno, also was deemed unfit to fight after suffering corneal abrasions. Artem Lobov, a McGregor ally who was apparently part of the incident, also was pulled from the card.
It was unclear whether the incident was prompted by White stripping McGregor of his belt, or by previous bad feelings between McGregor's camp and Khabib Nurmagomedov, scheduled to fight Max Holloway for McGregor's vacated belt in the main event. Nurmagomedov was filmed in a confrontation with Lobov, the McGregor ally, earlier this week.
On Thursday (Friday NZT), McGregor and his entourage approached a large vehicle full of fighters that was leaving Barclays Center in Brooklyn after the media event, according to MMA Fighting's Ariel Helwani and videos posted of the incident. "Chairs were thrown through the van window and one passenger on the van was injured," Helwani reported, in an apparent reference to Chiesa.
Videos posted to social media show a chaotic scene, with at least one guardrail being flung and general disorder.
"Conor went bananas and put a beating on the van that we were in," Chiesa's coach Rick Little told MMAjunkie. "A million security guards had to restrain him. Mike's cut up now. He's got marks on him, for sure. I don't think too serious. Everything happened so fast, it was just like we got jumped."
Little told the site that his fighter had been cut by shattered glass. And some media members at the arena reported that the target of McGrergor's ire was apparently Nurmagomedov, who seemed to believe that was the case.
"I am laughing inside," the Russian told Helwani. "You broke window? Why? Come inside. If you real gangster why don't you come inside? This is big history gangster place. Brooklyn. You want to talk to me? Send me location. I am going to come. No problem."
White, meanwhile, called the incident the most despicable thing in UFC history, according to ESPN's Okamoto.
"You want to grab 30 [expletive] friends and come down here and do what you did today?" White said in a video posted by Okamoto. "It's disgusting. And I don't think anybody is going to be huge Conor McGregor fans after this. I don't know if he's on drugs or what his deal is, but to come and do this and act like this?"
Later Thursday night (Friday NZT), the UFC issued a statement regarding the incident:
"Thursday afternoon, following the UFC 223 media day at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, an incident in the facility injured two athletes on Saturday's card, forcing them to be pulled from the event.
"Lightweight Michael Chiesa, who received several facial cuts, was deemed unfit to fight by the New York State Athletic Commission and the UFC medical team, and he was removed from his bout against Anthony Pettis."
Source:stuff.co.nz