No More Passes For Conor McGregor?
11/26/2024 07:44 AM
McGregor has vowed to 'move forward' in his latest statement, but can he escape the man he's become?
Conor McGregor has made yet another statement regarding the recent guilty verdict against him in civil court regarding the sexual assault of a woman at a hotel room in 2018.
This is the third statement from "The Notorious" on the situation, and the first that offers any sort of remorse for what happened — although that is directed towards his fiancé Dee Devlin and not his accuser Nikita Hand.
"I know I made mistakes," he wrote on X (formerly Twitter). "Six years ago, I should have never responded to her outreaches. I should have shut the party down. I should never have stepped out on the woman I love the most in the world. That's all on me."
"I can't go back and I will move forward," he concluded. "That's it. No more. Getting back to the gym — the fight game awaits!"
Dublin prosecutors refused to press criminal charges against McGregor over the 2018 rape accusation, but a civil jury just found him guilty of assaulting Hand after two weeks of testimony that included a detailed description of sexual assault and extensive injuries she sustained. McGregor has maintained his innocence in all his statements, noting that the jury was not technically ruling him guilty of rape and that the $260,000 in damages did not include punitive or aggravated damages.
That's not going to get the Irish sports star very far in the eyes of the general public, who have watched McGregor behave in increasingly erratic manner over the past six years. We're at a point now where his Wikipedia page's controversies section is longer than that of his sports career, and that doesn't include the many petty incidents that didn't make the cut.
Reasonable people can debate the evidence presented in the trial of Nikita Hand v. Conor McGregor, but there's no denying a mountain of McGregor behavior that has been documented plain as day on camera and in pictures — in other hotel rooms, in other bathrooms, and in other bars. McGregor's latest statement apologizes to his fiancé as if the 2018 incident was isolated, as if he hadn't just brushed off another sexual assault accusation in Miami last year by claiming the encounter was consensual.
McGregor's loose behavior with other women has been extensively reported on. His violent outbursts are as well. Whether he's smashing phones or punching people — an old man in a bar, a DJ in Italy — there's plenty of fire to go with the smoke. It's to the point where you read a story about a woman fleeing McGregor's yacht by jumping into the bay, and you have to wonder if the official statement of denial paints the full picture of what happened.
You may also wonder whether it's a coincidence that the same woman's car was later firebombed and a brick thrown through her window after she filed a civil lawsuit, one which she ultimately withdrew. It's a tough thing to Google, we admit, because 2018 accuser Nikita Hand went through something similar last year when masked men invaded her home in the middle of the night and stabbed her partner.
Hand's lawyers tried to introduce this incident during the civil trial, arguing that they believed 'supporters of McGregor' were behind the attack and it justified a request for $780,000 in damages for relocation. The judge shut this down because there was no evidence linking McGregor to the attack.
At this point, though, how can you look at the black cloud of controversy hovering above McGregor and continue to give him all the benefits of the doubt? Things have gotten very dark with "The Notorious" following his big money fight with Floyd Mayweather in 2017. This case with Nikita Hand gives us a glimpse into where things were at the end of 2018 — on the prowl for benders with random women, honking his car horn outside his friends' homes in the early hours of the morning looking for accomplices. Doing cocaine, which was widely speculated but now confirmed on court record.
And let's be clear: the path he has continued down since then cannot be described as 'upwards' in any metric other than financial.
It would be wonderful if this moment did resonate with McGregor and push him to give up the drugs and the partying and the philandering. It's certainly destroyed his reputation and may destroy his fighting career. But just like his apology to Dee, we have doubts about the sincerity of his commitment to returning to the gym and focusing on a martial arts lifestyle.
We've had six years of evidence showing us who Conor McGregor is. It will be a long road back to a place where he can convince anyone that the future will be any different.
