I Don't Care About Conor McGregor's Leg
Dustin Poirier broke Conor McGregor’s leg with an elbow block Saturday night in Las Vegas after pummeling him for nearly all of their UFC 264 main event bout. This happened about half a year after Poirier knocked McGregor out at UFC 257 in January.
McGregor’s leg break at Poirier’s hands was gruesome. I don’t happen to care all that much about it, though.
McGregor has undergone surgery on the left leg broken by Poirier. I don’t really care if it heals fast, or slowly, well or imperfectly.
I don’t care whether McGregor is able to ever fight again. So long as he doesn’t spend it all on more McMansions, toys, or substances, he’s made enough money to ensure that his family will never want for any necessity.
I just don’t care about Conor McGregor’s leg. Maybe I should care, but I don’t.
That ambivalence is probably due to my own moral failings. Still, fairly or not, I mostly blame McGregor for my callousness.
McGregor has hurled racist and sexist hate speech at opponents for years, now. McGregor insults people’s faith, and has a penchant for discussing and insulting opponents’ families.
McGregor has been credibly accused of rape, has assaulted multiple fans, including when he punched an older, seated man in the back of the head. McGregor has used a deadly weapon to attack his colleagues as they innocently sat in a bus during a fight week that they were scheduled to work at, traumatizing one - Rose Namajunas - and nearly blinding another - Ray Borg.
For all this McGregor has so far only received meaningless slaps on the wrist from authorities and mostly uncritical coverage from major outlets like UFC partner ESPN. McGregor has been rewarded with big fights despite all these offenses and being on a losing streak in the ring for the past half-decade.
Ahead of his UFC 264 fight McGregor welched on a prior promise to donate to Poirier’s charity, alleged that Poirier’s wife Jolie was making sexual advances at him, and promised that Dustin would be carried out on a stretcher after their contest.
"I'm going to make this man pay with his life, and I mean it. You're dead in that octagon tomorrow night,” McGregor said while interviewed Friday.
Instead, of course, it was McGregor who was carted out of the ring and arena on a stretcher after losing for the fifth time in his last eight professional outings.
McGregor still managed to fit calling Poirier’s wife a misogynistic slur and threatening loudly to have her and Dustin murdered in their sleep in between his latest loss and being carried away by medics. He said all that on camera, with dozens of officials around him.
Despite that, McGregor’s slurs and death threats were not remarked on by the ESPN broadcast team at the time and neither the UFC nor the Nevada State Athletic Commission have announced disciplinary actions for their meal ticket for his clear violations of the UFC’s code of conduct, Nevada commission regulations, and Nevada state law.
That was Saturday. This week McGregor has continued to publicly and illegally threaten Poirier and his family. Tuesday morning McGregor posted photos of Dustin Poirier and his daughter along with thinly veiled threats claiming that they were “gonezo,” and promising that he is, in fact, capable of the grisly crimes implied because he is a self-described “dangerous” and “nasty dude,” appropriating pre-fight quotes from Poirier.
So, no, I don’t care about Conor McGregor’s leg. Perhaps I’ll start caring more once the UFC, regulators, and legal authorities start caring more about his blatant crimes.
Try me. I’d love to find out.