The Ariel Helwani Show - Breaking: Conor McGregor civil trial reaches verdict; here’s everything you need to know | The Craic

Episode Date: November 22, 2024

Conor McGregor lost his sexual assault civil case. Petesy Carroll, Chuck Mindenhall, and Ben Fowlkes react to McGregor being found liable for a December 2018 sexual assault in Dublin.

Welcome back to The Crack, everyone. Thank you so much for joining me today. We have big news out of Dublin today as Conor McGregor has lost his sexual assault civil case in Dublin. The news only broke about 90 minutes ago here, so everything is happening as we speak. We had a lot of things to talk about this week, but that's going to take a backseat to all of this stuff. Obviously, huge news, one of the biggest superstars in the history of the sport. I will get into everything that we have at hand right now in just a few minutes.

But before then, I just want to introduce my esteemed colleagues this week from the great uncrowned vertical, as Chael Sonnen would say. I'm joined, as always, by Chuck Mendenhall, and a debut this time for the great Ben Foulkes of the Co-Main Event Podcast. Lads, how are you? I just wanted to bring you in before we unravel the proceedings of today at Dublin's High Court. So thank you so much for joining me. Do you mind if I get into this and then we can discuss the ins and outs of it? Of course, man. Do your thing. Do your thing. Okay. I'm going to read an article that we've put up on crown myself and shaheen al-shadi have been working on it and here we go conor mcgregor has lost his sexual assault civil case in dublin a high court jury awarded damages of 248 603 euro to nikita hand

against mcgregor on friday after ruling that she was sexually assaulted by the former UFC champion in a Dublin hotel in December 2018. Hand 35 claimed she was raped by McGregor and another man, James Lawrence, in a penthouse suite at the Beacon Hotel. The jury found that Lawrence did not assault Hand. Damages of €188,603.60 were awarded to Hand with an additional 60 000 euro also added making it a total of 248 603 and 60 cents sorry 248 000 euro 603 hundred and 60 cents sorry if that doesn't make sense mcgregor was accompanied to the court by fiancee d devlin for the first time during the trial's two-week proceedings to hear the jury's decision on Friday. Several of McGregor's family members were also present at the High Court. Reports from the court state that the jury took six hours and ten minutes to come to their decision.

Leaving the court at approximately 5pm local time, McGregor declined to make comment as he was sworn by the waiting media. The case was a civil case, not a criminal case, meaning the assault is deemed a civil wrong and therefore the plaintiff is entitled to compensation. However, McGregor will not the case was a civil case not a criminal case meaning the assault is deemed a civil wrong and therefore the plaintiff is entitled to compensation however mcgregor will not face criminal sanctions um outside the high court han gave a statement to media thanking her legal team the rape crisis center her family and her friends she said lastly i want to thank my daughter freya she has given me so much strength and courage over the last six years throughout this nightmare to keep pushing forward for justice. I want to show Freya and every other

girl and boy that you can stand up for yourself if something happens to you, no matter who the person is, and justice will be served. To the victims of sexual assault, I hope my story is a reminder that no matter how afraid you might be, speak up, you have a voice, and keep on fighting for justice i know this has not only impacted my life my daughters my family and my friends tremendously it is something that i will never forget for the rest of my life now that justice has been served i can now try to move on and look forward to the future with my family and friends so that is what we have so far and we will be adding to that article throughout the day

and sorry i was very nervous about reading such a vast text there out loud but um obviously huge news here lads and um please let me be a sounding board for you guys on this i've been keeping up with this for the last two weeks and it has been an incredibly polarizing court case in Ireland. I mean, everybody has been weighing in and there has been talk about it everywhere. It's been all over the news, the cover of newspapers. And I remind you, as I said to Ariel earlier this week, there's a general election happening here next week. And I feel like this has been rivaling it for publicity, which is absolutely insane. We know McGregor has yet to comment.

He left the court at about 5 p.m. with Dee Devlin. And of course, as we just read there, Nikita had her say outside of the high court too. Incredible stuff concerning possibly the biggest star of the UFC has ever seen, Chuck. It is. It's a crazy thing man it is it's and i gotta say that i wasn't anticipating i know we kind of were hitting touching base on this yesterday that it might actually happen before we tape and i don't think either one of us thought that it would uh would be like guilty right like it's just it doesn't usually happen um so the first part of is just like wow somebody's accused of uh of notoriety somebody who uh you know has a big

name and seems almost invincible in that sort of situation finally gets caught with something you know and i mean nothing has really stuck to conor mcgregor other than um you know he's had like people know like the kinds of things he's had. The old man at the bar situation, the mini car situations he's had. There's been so many things that have added up around him, but nobody really, nothing really sticks. But I feel like this is that first big blow where something comes in and it's corroborated and it's found to be guilty and incredible and everything else and you say like what does this mean for conor mcgregor this is a crazy situation um and i gotta say man it's like it feels it feels almost like you're talking about it in

ireland and kind of the way it's been and i feel like it's almost the i don't know how it feels out for you ben in montana but it feels almost like nobody's talking about it out here until today it feels like now it's blowing up but it has kind of been under the radar so this whole thing is a lot to process all at once man yeah yeah sorry go ahead one thing i i wondered pizzi maybe you could tell us is so i understand what you're saying this is a a civil case were there any criminal charges filed what was there like can there be criminal charges filed after the civil case? Where does that stand? As far as I know, there won't be.

Nikita Hand has stated throughout this situation that the only reason why she went to civil court is because the DPP, which is the director of public prosecutions in Ireland, they did not take the case. I believe the statistic is only 14% of rape cases reported by the police are brought to court, to criminal court by the DPP. It's an incredibly, it's a difficult burden of proof as far as I know on the DPP.

You asked me beforehand, had it anything to do with the the the inquiries and investigations that we talked about around the donald cerrone fight in 2020 you remember mark rimondi getting up to ask a question and he was roundly booed when he was asked uh when he asked conor mcgregor about the proceedings this is the same thing so what happened then was nikita presented herself to the rape crisis center she was brought there by an ambulance at that point the the police in ireland the gardi on gardi she akana they would have launched an investigation throughout the year 2019 when it was reported by the new york times that was what they were doing they were trying

to gather this evidence and they obviously didn't find that they had enough to bring it to court because as you know, this would be the state bringing a case against Conor McGregor as opposed to Nikita Hand herself. So this, as far as Nikita has explained throughout the two weeks in the High Court, this is why she pursued civil damages as it was the only way she could really hold McGregor to account in this situation. Does that make sense? Sorry, I'm not a legal expert. Yeah, that makes sense. I guess I also wonder, when I saw the financial part of it at the end, the actual numbers of it, that seems low to me is there what do you know about is that

what they were seeking is that what the the suit was for or are there like caps on it or anything that why do you think that that was the number in his closing charge the judge definitely commented on this now he wasn't listing off know, certain figures correlating to certain crimes, but he was certainly referencing this. There was no, there was no exact number given throughout the trial. Ariel was asking me this every time I updated on the Ariel Hawane show, he was asking me like, have they mentioned how much at the very beginning of the trial in Hans, for in hands for hands legal counsel in, in his opening gamut, John Gordon, he was kind of saying he was, he was stating about Connor's defense. He was saying, these people are going to tell you that this woman is a gold digger and she's looking for a million in damages. That was all that was stated throughout. I, I think that a lot of people were on the same page as you guys, as in it would be a lot more. But I got the sense, I watched Nikita outside speak, and I got the sense that the money wasn't the most important thing for her here. It was to get justice, to have this out in the public eye. There's also been reports from various tabloids

that in the same framing that was used in the Irish press when the DPP were investigating this, I think you guys will remember it was Irish Sports Star. They weren't able, it was illegal to state at that point with no charges being brought to McGregor, it was illegal to state his name. And that same framing irish sports star that was used on several occasions when they discussed that um a person had turned down an offer of money if that's nikita hand it seems to be framed the same way i can't say that is definitely this situation but that was reported

by several outlets over here that a figure had been turned down as opposed to going to civil court pz can i ask you something man like we've talked about for the last few years you're like it you kept saying that basically connor's juxtaposition i guess from his original star shooting up to all of these things that have kind of happened over the course of time this now taking the cake and kind of burying the rest in a lot of ways because it becomes like a a very real thing for people to look at what is the perception out there of him at this point man i saw like just the video right there where he's uh he's getting into the car you can see all the press some of the questions are in that way like when you see an american um somebody who gets in trouble

for something and they're found guilty are very they're very much, do you want to apologize? Do you want to say these things? They're trying to get them to. But what is it? What's your sense, having been around this trial? Does it feel like this is kind of the ruin of Conor McGregor out there? You know what? I think a lot of people have very strong feelings about McGregor out there? It's, you know what? I think a lot of people have very strong feelings about

McGregor. And I'd say the vast majority of people have negative sentiment towards him. This certainly won't help that. It's tragic in a way, because when I started covering this guy, when he was 19 or 20 years of age, and he started to make those initial steps into this world we thought this guy was going to be such a power for good you know he's such a a great ambassador for Ireland at that point but I'd say it was roughly around the the Mayweather I can remember the Mayweather press conferences where he used a few choice um analogies on stage um being black from the waist down i remember people started to kind of turn then there was also the incident where he called andre feely a certain word a homophobic slur after he fought artem loboff funnily enough when he hit

the the old guy in the bar that was a really bad one too like this has been constant uh constant negative press and a lot of it pertaining to his life outside of um the cage i would say that this is this situation you know having it in the newspaper that he has allegedly raped someone i think that is probably the worst it's been but i will say at the same time there are a lot of people throughout this case fighting McGregor's Corner online in general conversation. I've certainly had more phone calls with people in normal life who are calling the guy who works in MMA to voice how they feel about this situation. I would say 95% of them were negatively commenting on the situation uh with regard to mcgregor but there definitely was people that you know um were speaking to the inconsistencies that remy farrell conor mcgregor's legal counsel was noting for up to two or three

days i believe her cross-examination went on for nikita's and they were constantly showing cctv footage which they believe showed and nikita coming on to james lawrence uh appearing to be very happy a lot of people were kind of saying well you know there's this as well and we believe that um that hand is lying or she's you know she's uh forged a different narrative um it's been i can imagine it's been a very tough time for Nikita with that. The first couple of days, her counsel from the get-go were kind of like, this woman isn't a saint. She went out.

She was enjoying alcohol. She was enjoying cocaine. Instead of returning to her partner at the time and her child, she stayed out. And I think a lot of people you know who were just reading it as we all were all of us weren't in court I think a lot of people were making up their minds about Nikita very early on I think what helped um her case here was first of all when she was seen in the Dublin rape crisis center the doctor who saw her said, you know, her injuries are consistent with that of a rape victim. The ambulance driver who picked up Nikita Hand after her mother called

to say her daughter had been raped, one of the ambulance workers said this is the most bruised she had seen people in a very long time when she picked her up. There was a lot of evidence going with them, but again, a lot of people found that Remy Farrell's cross-examination, constantly highlighting these inconsistencies, they found that was more telling than all of this other stuff. So it's been amazing how meticulously people have followed this. And really, we have Paul Healy to be thankful for that. Paul Healy of the Irish Mirror, who has been routinely live tweeting these.

And I don't know how he did it. I mean, there is five seconds between some of these tweets and it will be a block vote. It's incredible how he managed to do it. But there is a lot to get through here. I think this morning, a lot of people were saying it won't be today there's just simply too much to get through with the cctv all of the testimony of course as i mentioned that went on for two weeks um they broke at 2 p.m sorry they broke at about 1 30 until 2 and at that point healy who i mentioned the irish mirror text a lot of people have come back into the room and the judge said the jury are going to keep working till 6 p.m. I found that strange because

every other day the court had been finished by four and for him to say on Friday the most likely day for Irish people to take off early and for him to say they were staying in till six I thought to myself well they must be confident of getting something done today if they're to keep the court open an extra two hours. It turned out it came in about 4.30. And as we saw, very, very emotional scenes, I'd say, from Nikita Hand outside with her family. And obviously McGregor just getting out of Dodge, getting into his car and refusing to speak to the media, which I'm not shocked by either. The judge warned before he gave out the decision, like, you know, let's not flare up here. Let's not become very animated. Let's, let's watch ourselves. It's, yeah, it's been a very emotive and very polarizing case.

The, okay. One question I had about how the jury process works there is it, you know, in America, it's, if you're in a criminal trial, it has been reported of eight women and four men. And I can remember around the time of the doctor gave an account of having to use forceps to remove a tampon that was wedged at the top of Nikita Hahn's vagina. McGregor, when he was cross-examined, he said he didn't see it there. He didn't think it had been there. Nikita's counsel then put to him well how did it get there um a lot of people you know conversing about this thought it would have went down very badly with women to suggest that she you know this well not offer any explanation as to how that got there after being out for a night um so yeah nine nine of of 12 as far as i know ben i think it's been widely reported of that and hey pt on these types of

things and may and correct me if i'm wrong they they try to make it as unambiguous as possible right like they say yes or no this person assaulted right this is kind of the process like you answer it yes or no is that how it works yeah in the end judge the judge in his final charge said you'll be given a list of questions so when he says list i'm sure some of them pertain to james lawrence who uh you know the the jury believes didn't assault nikita hand um that was a whole other um kind of subplot in this story, of course. Nikita had not remembering having intercourse with James Lawrence, not reporting that to the police when she hit the crisis center. And only when the guard had launched her investigation,

Lawrence had told the police that they had sex twice after the incident with McGregor had occurred. So that was a big part of Nikita's defense as well, as John Gordon put it to McGregor and Lawrence, that he was a patsy. He was simply saying this to portray Nikita a certain way. That was certainly their argument. Whereas McGregor's counsel was showing cctv

footage which they believe showed um nikita being affectionate with james lawrence or trying it on with him to a degree i should also say that mcgregor has just tweeted and thank you for passing this on chuck mcgregor says and this was at three minutes past six so about 15 minutes ago i will be appealing today's decision the judge's instruction and the modest award given was for assault not for aggravated or exemplary damages i am not disappointed that the jury did not hear all i am disappointed excuse me i am disappointed that the jury did not hear all the evidence that the dpp reviewed i am with my family now focused on my return thank you for all my support worldwide. This was something that did come up in the court as well. We aren't privy to the reportings. There

was a certain time where the judge had to stop DPP evidence being given up. As I explained at the start, DPP being director of prosecutions, director of public prosecutions they launched the initial investigation when nikita went to the rape crisis center at some point i'm not too sure which legal defense it was but one of the teams tried to bring something in from it there was a stop in the in the proceedings and i believe what was reported at the time was they were told that none of this could come into this courtroom as in this needs to be a completely separate thing than what the dpp were doing because if the dpp didn't bring it to court then they can't be using evidence in a different court proceeding for that if uh that's as far as i know now and again i am not a legal expert here but i'm doing my very best for you guys that's tough on my on live show isn't

it just to put on your legal cap and jump into the situation do you think that you know what commonly happens and i'm not this is more of a track record thing for for conor mcgregor just kind of being such a madcap you know and just off the handle is it is it possible that more people actually you know what i mean like that more people seeing a victory against something like this come out of the woodwork. You know what I'm saying? Like, do you see something like that happening?

I mean, we, the whispers at some point graduate into something more material and this is that moment, right? Like of things going on with Conor McGregor. So does that possibility exist? I mean,

there's certainly been more incidents that have been reported. Um, I don't know how far, you know, I don't know any of their grounds, evidence, anything like that. You have to remember as well, this is six years later that Nikita Handel is getting to court so I wouldn't know the timelines or anything like that. There's also the court case he has with Artem Lob loboff i don't know when that's coming up like there is there's certainly a lot on his plate here if he's going

through the appeals process that will take a very long time too i'd imagine but um you know i i think i think you come away from something like this and you kind of, you're kind of sitting around thinking like, what is the impact? Like that, that's the real next question, right? Like what, what will this do to McGregor? And that's a, that's a very loaded question because McGregor is much more than an individual now. He's a brand, you know, this guy has several companies attached to his name, like Forged Air South, the Mack Life, the Tidal Spray.

I know, I think there was talk of him launching other companies too. I mean, I'm only, this is the tip of the iceberg of things I mentioned. Do you think Ben, do you think that this affects him, you know, in sofar as what we talk about predominantly his career in the ufc or do you think the civil element is as opposed to the criminal thing will kind of help him in that regard obscure him from any serious serious kind of reprimands i think there's a few different ways to look at it honestly because there's the question of how we in the MMA world, in the fight sports world, will look at him now. But then there's also the question of how the broader public looks at him now. As you've seen, especially recently, the fight sports world, the fight fans

are among sports fans, maybe the ones most willing to look past something like this. You know, that gives me no joy to say, but I think that it's true that a lot of fight sports fans will take the position of, for one thing, if he says he didn't do it, I don't believe it. And I just want to see him get back in there and fight again. I'm sure there'll be a lot of people who think that. And I'm sure there's a lot of people who are sympathetic to an argument like, oh, hey, he's a rich, famous guy and people are coming after him with made up stories, just trying to get some money out of him, which I wish those people would stop and think about

what this woman had to go through over the course of six years to end up here with a judgment of basically like a quarter of a million dollars. Would you go through that for that long just to get that amount of money out of it? I don't think many people would. I think that even being willing to come forward with that in the first place, you know, she's seen how this has gone for other people. She had to know that they're going to tear your life apart and you're going to have to go to court and be willing to have them tear your life apart in a huge public sphere.

And if you're willing to do that, then I'm inclined to believe, you know, that this claim that it's not about money, that it's about being heard and justice. But I think there's a lot of MMA fans who won't see it that way. And that's sad, but I think that that's the reality. However, as far as the more mainstream public, do you remember when he fought Floyd Mayweather? And there was an undercurrent of people at the time who were saying like, hey, I have not forgotten Floyd Mayweather's many incidents of violence against women.

How am I supposed to give him my $100 for the pay-per-view and not feel gross about it? I remember writing a story for this. It was when I worked for USA Today and MMA Junkie, kind of about talking to different people about how they were trying to square that. They wanted to see the fight, but didn't feel great about giving Floyd Mayweather that money. And now you look at the other side of that fight and Conor McGregor is in that. And so the next time he shows up to fight, you got to ask yourself, how do I feel about putting money in this guy's pocket? I think the other side of it though, is getting him to get back in the UFC cage has been a big battle for the UFC.

Is he more likely to want to do that because he wants to replace some of these bad headlines with, hey, remember the thing that you know me for? Remember the thing I'm actually famous for? Let me go and do that to try to put this stuff behind me and i don't it's not like i see the ufc being like we don't want to be we don't want this kind of business you we've seen the ufc they want that kind of business they're they're not that concerned with what comes with it it's you know i listened to dana speaking recently and obviously this is all happening at the same time.

And to your point, Ben, about putting McGregor in the spots again and whether people will want to pay money for it, he mentioned the back end of 2025. And I believe a TV deal will be up in the air at that time, may have been secured, may not. Certainly the contract will be up and they'll be looking for new broadcast partners mcgregor you'd imagine like this guy has been one of the biggest

superstars probably the biggest superstar this company has ever created does this weaken him as a bargaining pin for the ufc chook like to be going in like obviously john jones a guy very controversial as well they'll be wanting to put him in the mix for potential broadcast partners in the future with him saying mcgregor at the back end of 2025 you'd imagine that he will be one of the guys they're saying to a potential brand part like a broadcast partner we're gonna have this guy fight you know he's gonna fight again then does that weaken his position as a bargaining tool for the ufc do you think joke i don't think so because in a lot of ways the ufc has uh kind of carried on without him anyway i mean connor has

kept himself involved in association to everything that's going on he's very good at remaining vital to the picture even if he's not participating um i don't think that that will have a bearing and it's also just that the ufc has, Ariel mentions this all the time. It's just about those letters now, man. Like they sell out wherever they go. I think that the brand now is as big as it's, you know, obviously as it's ever been as its own thing. The pandemic helped it kind of get to a new level.

I think that like the gambling scene and the in the legalization of sports gambling has pushed it into a level where lots of people pay attention who maybe don't even care about the fights themselves it just uh they they have the action on it that sort of thing i think that where the ufc is is uh bigger than anything connor's going to do and honestly man i'm with ben i mean there's a you know how this this goes there there'll be a major outcry maybe for a few days and then there will be that thing that element that will punch back um probably orchestrated in part by conor mcgregor obviously trying to do damage control but he will have a certain amount of people um coming to his defense through this

process and what is where does that leave it i know that Mike Tyson, he's a great example. We just watched him. Mike Tyson had an asterisk over him for a long time. But did it ultimately prevent people, you know, from, he went to jail, you know what I mean? Did it ultimately prevent people from paying attention, watching him, even finding him like a beloved figure in the game? No. I mean, maybe some people, but not everyone.

And that's just the unfortunate thing and i agree but what ben said about combat sports kind of being the more forgiving of all the sporting leagues is in large part because of that and when you have a you know when you have a guy a president like dana white who's basically is on camera slapping his own wife it's not like if you have adam silver or somebody or like some league commissioner who's going to um try to lead by example and uh and put some kind of punishment down i can you guys imagine the ufc doing anything about this you know like are they going to do anything about this where's it going to come from i think them doing anything about this is them saying you know it's

basically playing into the the guys in the class action lawsuit and stuff like that by saying these guys are ours to reprimand as opposed to being sole traders right if they're like we are punishing this guy who was our employee i don't think that helped i don't think that's the parent and i don't think that's what you're asking me about here i know in any other league in the world you know the premier league um even gaelic football in ireland which is not you were not a professional athlete you're an amateur you would certainly have reprimands for this um i'm i'm thinking about dana being asked about this and i i i expecting to say like but we're gonna have to see how this this plays out even though it essentially has

played out i mean gregor says he's going through the appeal process i think that gives dana something to say like look gregor's going to appeal this let's see how this goes do you think i'm off the market ben or do you expect something different i would if i try to close my eyes and picture dana white's response the next time he's asked at a press conference is he'll say you know that's connor's stuff to deal with uh we'll see how it plays out. And he'll just hope that kind of people forget and move on. And especially the last update we heard from Dana White, and this has been the shifting timetable of McGregor's return to the UFC,

has at this point become like a self-parody. The last thing I heard him say was, we'll see probably toward the end of 2025. And if the UFC is making the calculation, hey, by then, you know, we'll be able to use them sort of as at least some kind of bargaining chip in a new broadcast rights deal. It'll be a year later or so. People will mostly have moved on and they'll just, they'll want to be a part of the show. Again, they'll remember what a big time event it is anytime conor mcgregor fights and it won't really be an issue i think that the ufc's response to this would be don't give it any oxygen let it right let it kind of die out on its own and

trust that your fans are not really going to care about something that much the thing is to me is that at a certain point even the people who are the most ardent Conor McGregor defenders, you know, we've mentioned several of the things already from his past on this show. You keep saying PC when he hit the old guy in the bar,

I still want to point out that that guy was like 50 something. Like as a, as a 45 year old man, I feel shape as you've been right. That'd be ridiculous. You're still ripped.

You're clearly on steroids. Like, you know, he took it though that conor regger hit him with that left hand and that guy ate it like it was nothing so that guy's tough but so many of those things you go to conor regger's wikipedia page and the right now the the biggest section seems to be criminal charges and controversies and things like that to the point that you know when when uh my co-host chad dunnison and i were talking about on the co-main event podcast and we were talking about okay conor mcgregor is in court for a sex assault case and we our first question was which one i know which incident was this because we've heard so many of these and the thing is so many of these other ones you know the punching the old guy in the bar, throwing the dolly through the bus window, all this kind of stuff.

The mascot that he like blasted in Miami. Oh my God, I forgot about that one. Smashing somebody's phone, all this kind of stuff where it's like, okay, all this other stuff, there's a whole lot of evidence that comes out that you did it. And we, or we see you, we see you on video camera doing it. Yeah, it's not out of character, right? It's like kind of the pattern. You want to then turn around and be like, I am a blameless victim in this. Basically, people are coming out. They're making up stories on me and coming after me on this.

And I think people get a lot less likely to believe that when they have seen you with their own eyes doing a lot of this stuff that you've been accused of. And it just, at a certain point, it becomes so overwhelming that if you were making a choice to ignore it, you kind of have to own that choice. You're kind of saying you just don't care. You want to watch the fights. You mentioned the fans, Ben. I think we all have had interactions with the MMA fan base on a particular

app for the last few years. I don't want to say that the people that we see um and that are in sometimes in your replies nagging you about this and that are the dominant voice of mma fandom but do you think that they protest a situation like this chuck they'll kind of put their feet down foot down and say you know we we want answers about this mcgregor situation or at the end of the day are we asking too much of the fan base at that point because these people are just looking for an escape on saturday for the most part right ah it's such a i want to believe one thing but i mean i've just seen it too many times it's like every you know it's like just about anything that happens that's egregious i

mean it never ends up being as egregious as it seems as it's happening you know what i mean like in the end i mean there's just there's apologists and there are people like you just said who just want to be entertained there's you know it's going to it's going to happen i can guarantee it we're doing a show right now and we're kind of reacting in real time. There will be a backlash to this as well, like just us talking about it. That's just how this sport works, man. I think that the major thing now is you've seen this, like Ben just kind of detailed this kind of legacy of his that has devolved over the second half of his career into what kind of

trouble is he in this time i said well he's like spinning plates right like one thing he's one fire here one fire here one fire here um like it it you worry about him i remember at one point like maybe seven eight years ago when things started happening i think it might have been around the time of the uh the bus incident with the the hand truck where you're just like how far off the rails will he go and i don't mean i'm not trying to be punny here but like how far how far off the rails will this go does it end up where con mcgregor is like one of those really tragic stories in the end um and honestly man it's kind of scary how far he's went into that territory from even from those moments you know what i mean so to

apologize and the fan base there's going to be a certain amount of fan base that's just gonna you know there's a certain amount of trolls out there who would stick up for anybody like look i mean they'd stick up for anybody about anything but i'm not sure it's going to be easy to do and i you know i think that there's just a common sense in this a common sense factor which is often missing through these transactions that i think that will prevail on some level like you know what i mean like so i think that the the idea of conor mcgregor will take the hit but i don't know if that's going to stop all the trolls from sticking up for him yeah i mean i think that's true i think there are some people you you know, in the MMA fan base who will rush to come to a guy's defense, who will gleefully come to a guy's defense in a sex assault thing, which is depressing to think about. But to what you're saying about like the second half of his career, it's like an episode of Behind the Music, the VH1, where it's just like, it's all kind of coming, crashing down, it seems. And I hate to even bring this up as a part that factors in, but, uh, it's not even like he is a super relevant fighter from a competitive standpoint anymore.

So, I mean, if you were the UFC and you're bringing him back, you're bringing, you are supposedly bringing back the celebrity Conor McGregor, right? That's what you're going for. Cause he brings the attention. He brings the pay-per-view buys you're not eager to get him in the cage because you think the lightweight division or whatever division he would end up fighting in absolutely needs him there in order to sort out what the pecking order is like that the sport athletically has largely moved on yeah and i think one of the things we saw in those last two dustin poirier fights is that conor mcgregor did not move on with it he was busy doing other stuff busy being a celebrity and getting rich off the the whiskey stuff but but i think that if you're

bringing him back it is purely for the star power and how does the star power not at least to some extent bring this with it yeah it's a very good point um and as you're saying that ben you know talking about the second half of his career i think this is a clear point and it's it's it's the toys and story it's the trappings of fame the mayweather how the way weather for you, he's earning multiple times what he's ever earned in his life. And a lot of these instances come on the back of that throughout that process. And I can remember thinking at the time, just get this guy fight, get him a date, get him, get his head switched on. Because the guy I knew early in his pro career into his UFC career, he was awesome. He was almost like a monk.

You know, when you spoke to him, he was like this. He was so into kinetic energy, the flexibility of the body. And he really used to watch animals fighting. And bringing like positives into life, right? Like imagining things and conjuring. Affirmations, yes. Affirmation, yeah. He was incredibly motivational person to be around.

Like this is a guy you wanted to be in his company to listen to him. He was very wise. It seemed for his years. And then beyond Mayweather, it just turned into this, into this just wild situation. You were waking up every morning going, what's it going to be this time? It's funny. You mentioned the Wikipedia section of controversies, Ben ben i was set that about 10 times this week you know just the sheer length

of it it's multiple times the length of his mma record there now and pizza remember we did a like yeah when we're at the with the ringer we did a timeline essentially of Conor Gregor. This wasn't even the full career. This was a timeline from his last fight just to what we thought was going to be his fight at UFC 303. We thought it was heading towards that, and it was something like 3,000 words. And most of it was, you know, like getting in trouble this, doing this, you know, a court case here.

It's got four A four pages long, right? It was ridiculous. It was ridiculous. And that was just in between fights, which we still haven't got to the other bookend yet. But that was just between the fight from his last fight. I feel like we mentioned Tyson on this podcast and obviously we're coming off a week where Tyson's roundly celebrated you know by the vast majority of people and John Jones to an extent

right like not to the extent of this severity but he's had some pretty bad things on his record too but yeah yeah absolutely and you know with John Jones might be slightly different but you mentioned to me when we were gearing up for Paul V. Tyson Chuck

that Tyson's a pariah. People are forgetting. I was very young at the time. I was just starting to go to school when all this stuff kicked off with Tyson. So it's hard for me to remember my well-rounded thoughts about it. I wonder if that's the situation McGregor was in. And I don't want you to pull out a timeline right now on this, but like, how long do you think it took for people to start playing ball with, with Tyson again after that? Well, the morality of our society was a lot different at the time too. And it was just a, uh, you know, there was no social media, like you couldn't just cancel them.

Um, it was more, it played out and just private conversations and like, you know, around your buddies and, and you know what I mean? Like it was more it played out and just private conversations and like you know around your buddies and and you know what i mean like it was more of like that and uh it was a been i mean i don't know you you just said you're 45 so you remember these times like yeah it felt to me like it hung with him for a long time but this is a guy who you know is a very public figure i mean just like connor and you know um some of the things that were going on including i remember him you know going to going to prison coming out of prison like it was all very documented and i think that that did hover over him i can remember

i think it was the was it mcneely who did he return against peter mcneely yeah peter mcneely he came back in that fight and i remember there was like this major confusing like buzz about it because part of part of it was like this is a guy who was wrecking everybody's heavyweight champion everybody just wanted to see that guy right like they wanted as they still have it he's gonna go in there and just wreck this guy but then there was like this media contingency that was like behind it all and had to ask hard questions and it there was a dark cloud that followed him through that part of his career and i think it hovered with him man i mean like i said in the end what wins out is what they what they push forward it's a game of hype right they're going to push forward the hype they're going to hope that that drowns

out the noise around it they're going to try to do this with connor too um but i felt like it stuck with tyson for a long time and i'm not sure that mcgregor at whatever age he is right now um 36 yeah 36 will be you know is he going to be around five six seven years like still trying to do this i doubt it i mean who knows to be honest like his story at this point but i think it's going to take a while man you know to live something like this down And I'm not saying he ever should be able to, but you know how it works, man. You know, for people to start wanting to look at him a different way again, maybe they won't at all, but it's going to take a little while. But I think the Tice one lasted more just because I felt like we weren't moving as a society from one news chain to the next and like switching gears and having our attention stolen all the time. You focused on that for quite a while back then. Well, I think one of the differences, though, with the Tyson thing was that, as you kind of alluded to, he was a little bit closer to his athletic prime at the time.

You know, he went to prison when he was one of the top heavyweights in the world and then came out and some of those fights that he had initially coming back seemed like sort of jokes seemed like okay we're setting up a fight purely for tyson to win but also it was sort of baked in honestly to the tyson appeal was this guy is uh an out of control monster who might do anything and that they worked with that honestly they used that as a marketing tool for tyson fights because it was part of the thing even if he wasn't fighting a top heavyweight opponent it was you never know what this guy's might do he might do anything and you know the evander holyfield fights came after that the biting the ear thing came after he was out of prison i was just going so right it's like forth. They were trying to market like an untamed animal type thing.

I remember this. That's a great point. And he very much played into that. And I, but also one of the things that I think has always made Tyson fascinating to us was that there was a, like a terrifying power on one hand, but there was also a real vulnerability. Like there was like a sort of hurt little boy underneath who you got glimpses of, who you could see every once in a while and who would talk to you and would tell you things about what he was actually thinking,

where you would go, Oh, he shouldn't be saying that out loud, but also I'm riveted by the fact that he is. And I was just before this Jake Paul fight, I was revisiting an old New Yorker article that they did before the second Holyfield fight. And at one point, the writer makes the point of like, hey, Evander Holyfield seems like a better dude. You go over there, he's hitting the heavy bag while he's singing gospel music and he's going to try his best in all the sports platitudes.

But he hasn't been to prison for rape. He's not going to sit there and talk about his brutal childhood growing up and around immense poverty and crime in rape. He's not going to sit there and talk about his brutal childhood growing up around immense poverty and crime in Brooklyn. He's not as good a copy. He's not as good a story as Mike Tyson is. And so people gravitated toward that. As far as when the image started to soften, honestly, I think it was the hangover. I think it was being in the hangover. That's true. hangover yeah there's a lot of people now who are who know tyson as a celebrity and they weren't

around for the the tyson athletic peak in the 90s uh you know they remember him from the hangover and if you recall the way the reason he works as a plot device in the hangover is because we know he lives in las vegas we know he has tigers and exotic animals and you know if you had even you as a regular person if you had to go to mike tyson's house to apologize for having wronged him he might do anything that was part of it that was why tyson was the perfect figure to play that role even now it's like mike tyson's the guy where if you start messing with mike tyson on an airplane as somebody did a couple years ago and just start bugging him he might turn around and punch you in the head. And like, that's part of like the, the appeal.

I don't know, like Conor McGregor at this point in his career, I think is going to just try to come back, try to say, incorporate me back into the UFC and not going to want to answer questions about it, not going to want to talk about it. And I just, I don't know how that's going to play how the ufc will handle i think everybody will just try to act like it didn't happen we don't want to talk about it let us please make that money again i want to put this to you guys because i'm very close to this situation like it's happening a few kilometers down the road for

god's sake um but a friend put to me today before anything was decided he said regardless of what way this goes i don't think anyone will change their mind on conor mcgregor as in the guys who have been defending him because he has been uh because that he's been nikita has been awarded these damages in a civil court they're not going to suddenly go, well, actually, I now see him this way. Same as the people who were on Nikita's side, she's awarded these damages, they're going to stay where they are, right? This is what I thought this guy was. Do you understand what I'm asking? Do you feel like this will dictate opinion on who, what McGregor is, Ben? Yeah, I think you're right. I think that most people have filtered into one camp or another on that. Because if you weren't affected by any of these many, many different accusations, and like I said, many of the ones that we saw for ourselves that were true, if that didn't change your mind, I don't know how the decision of a jury in a civil trial will i don't know if that's the

thing that makes you finally go well all right now i i must have to reevaluate how i see this guy because even even if he went to jail like even if he was a criminal trial he went to jail for a year you'd be saying that we'd say the same thing right yeah i think people have mostly kind of made up their minds about it and so yeah i can't see it just the fact that there's a verdict that goes against him i don't see that as being the thing that makes people change their minds maybe though it just starts to seem uh depending on what kind of circles you travel in a lot less cool to be a really vocal Conor McGregor fan. You used to see he was the guy who people knew about if they didn't know anything else about this sport. And he was the guy who people would be interested to see fight, even if they never watched any

other fights. And I don't know. To me, it seems like that has to be at least somewhat effective again so far this this case has not been nearly as big a news here as it has been there for you guys pc i'm sure but i think that there's got to be some of that where some people are going like it doesn't feel super great to join the party anymore when there's a conor mcor fight. I just don't think people consume based on their moral feelings anyway. A lot of times, you know, like Don King forever, a dude had murdered a guy, you know, and he was still dunking.

People knew about this story. If you go backwards and you're like looking at, you know, kind of like the way things played out before the rumble in the jungle, like going way back and forward, like people. People would mention this casually all the time. Oh, Don King killed a guy once in the 50s. It was just one of those things. But it was just part of his history, and it was not going to dictate whether you watched a Don King-promoted fight or not. There's plenty of people that see Dana White as a scumbag.

Plenty of people look at Vince McMahon, who's kind of crazy in the TKO sense of everything going on. You know, why he's basically no longer with the company, you know, and what people's opinions were him over the years. Did it really stop? It didn't stop anybody from paying attention is all I'm saying. You know, the people who want to pay attention are going to pay attention regardless. Don't you think it's a little easier though when it's like the promoter whether it's don king vincent man whatever because they can kind of stay out of the eye conor mcgregor when he fights it's a conor mcgregor fight it's kind of like uh if you're coming over to my house and we're we're having a little get together i'm

playing music and then i put on an r kelly song and you kind of look at me like i don't know man i don't know if i feel great about that one anymore. They just think you're being ironical or something. Yeah. Or like, yeah, I think that I, I think when you are the, the show yourself, that there is at least a little bit of that. Well, it's always been a game of like redemptions to like, you know, second chance, third, but when you get a guy like this, it was just a long uh you know insubordination it's a long pattern of just like being above the law

all that stuff kind of getting by with entitlement really you know i think it does basically factor in on some level especially as this you know it gets worse as it goes on like this is worse than probably you know than the other stuff this is worse right so i can remember growing up in denver colorado there was a heavyweight named ron ron lyle you guys know ron lyle like he was he was part of that golden era and like he did prison time like and he learned basically to box in prison it's kind of different because his story grew out of prison right and he had to kind of like but it became part of his story. It just depends. But I feel like it's, it's kind of like

that old Gretzky thing. It's where's the puck going, right? Let's say you skate to where the puck is going. And I feel like it's where the puck is going with Conor McGregor that's so scary and weird.

It's like, it's just heading towards this cliff and you're like, none of it is comfortable. None of it. You know what I mean? And we've seen him get by

with it for so long that, you know, it just becomes part of it. But at the same time, he's a complex figure. I think he's the first time we, in our coverage, probably have had to cover such a complex figure and actually ask these types of questions of it. You know, a guy of this stature. That's one thing, Perpizzi pizza i was going to ask you like if you know i mean for one thing the redemption thing i think one of the things that you that's kind of a requirement for the redemption arc is uh accepting some manner of guilt and saying you're sorry and moving on and it's hard to see him doing that one of the things i wonder about where he's at now is for him will

going through this experience and coming out of it this way will it change his behavior because there's been so many things so far leading up to this where you go he's got a bunch of enablers around him in one sense or another who have an incentive to never say no to him to never have a hard conversation with him because they're making money off him the ufc is making money off him he's been able to do all this stuff pretty consequence free because everybody else around him has an incentive in keeping him in business one way or another because it keeps money flowing to them but after you go something like this where he's sitting there uh and uh he and d devil and his fiancee she has to go to court with him and listen to all this stuff and the best case scenario the version he's offering is i did this stuff. And the best case scenario, the version he's offering is, I did this stuff, but it was consensual,

is still not great. And so does he come out of that remembering this and saying like, okay, this is something of a wake-up call. This is a sign that you're not immune to consequences, that stuff, you do stuff, and then bad stuff can happen to you as a result of that.

Do you think ptc based on what you know about him and what you know about where his head is at now and what his life is at now does is this a big enough thing to scare him into looking in the mirror and changing his life well i'll answer that in two parts ben because the guy that i see now on tv doesn't remind me of the guy i knew at all back then and hasn't for a very long time um i think mcgregor hit a level of success that very few people in life will very maybe nobody else will in the history of the ufc you know based on uh the kind of money he was making being allowed to fight mayweather all of that stuff the guy i know and you know honestly we weren't um we weren't extremely close to the point where i'd um know how he'd react to something like this but it's very he's a very different man in terms of

how he reacts to a lot of things now doubt he used to use as such fuel and he doesn't seem to do that anymore i mean it's just a permanent state of doubt a lot of fans have about him for a very long time now um i agree with you about the people around connor i think are very afraid of connor and not that he's going around i'm not trying to say like they're physically afraid of this guy but they they don't want to mess with their situation and i think that's been a problem. I think he needs to make wholesale sale changes to his life. Like even to be in a situation like this in December, 2018, you know,

year, maybe a year and a half after making 120 million to be, you know, according to, um, his legal team, like driving around on, you know, some morning beeping our houses to see if people want to keep partying. You know, it's an incredibly strange thing for a person of that level of wealth, fame, and notoriety to be doing. I can't help but question now,

like, is there ever a way back here? Like, we have kind of agreed that Tyson found a way back and we should point out that it's very different in that Tyson got found of, you know, he had criminal sanctions. He went to jail over this.

This is a civil court. McGregor will simply have to pay money to Nikita Hand because of this, because of the DPP not finding they had the evidence to go to court with this. But it does feel like we've made the distinction that there are people who wouldn't change their mind on Conor McGregor based on this. But there's also an awful, a huge amount of people in Ireland who have washed their hands of this guy.

Like I've heard so many people call him a national embarrassment of lost count. You know, this guy was an icon at one stage. Nobody knew what mixed martial arts wasn't. Or it was a very small community. Then he went off and he did what he did. And suddenly everybody's weighing in his chances against Dennis Siver. You know, like this is a, he turned the sport into a national conversation.

Um, I, I can't see a way that he'll ever get in the good books of those people again i don't know what you would have to do um i know we're talking about 30 years later uh tyson and now in this paul situation right 30 years it took him to get that hangover maybe 20 15 20 um i'm sorry if i didn't answer your question then my thoughts are all over the place here. But do you, how long, we've accepted that there will be, you know, a negative impact to Conor's name here, but can we ever see him getting back to where he was, Chuck?

Like this, it's, I'm trying to quantify in my head how big of a superstar this guy was. And I think he was one of one to the point where he hasn't won a fight in so many years and we still consider him the biggest superstar this guy was. And I think he was one of one to the point where he hasn't won a fight in so many years and we still consider him the biggest superstar in the sport. We're still going,

I wonder if this O'Malley kid can be the new McGregor. You know, which is absolutely insane when you think he last held the title in what, 2016? Yeah. The Eddie Alvarez fight?

That's when he was fighting as a champion anyway. Is there any way back for him to become this icon become this um kind of bastion of brilliance and success that we once saw him as i guess you know back in the day we used to uh wait to see what form of conor mcgregor would show up you know is it el chapo or whatever you know his shaved head or you know he was always there was different versions of him where i was like what what form will he show up on well obviously in those days um it was kind of uh let's let's keep mixing it up

let's keep them guessing type thing i think his only path back in the sense of like i don't i don't even know what how you'd want to look at it but if his path back to kind of where he wants to be would have to be something like genuine contrition where you come in and you're you're you're you can tell that he has switched he's changed something right fundamentally in his thinking and he's pleading not pleading maybe he's not even pleading maybe he's saying if you hate me you have the right you know blah blah blah that sort of thing if he's able to um kind of present some kind of sincerity on that level i could see people that's what it's about right like people do this all the

time where you you say okay well this guy was on a reckless path he was doing all these things he lost control but he's got he's gained control maybe who knows i mean everybody's the rampant drug thing that we've talked about with the cocaine and everything else. If he starts talking in ways like, you know what, man, I was an addict. I was crazy. I was out of control. Yeah, you could see it because this would be a new chapter, right? It would be like he was an old self.

He's dissociating himself from a guy who almost ruined him. He would be doing that. And I think that that would be the path back. But honestly, it's that severe for him at this point to try to regain any kind of trust or whatever you want to call it with his fan base or just fans in general. That's how severe it is.

It would have to almost be like something where he's 180. He's going the other way, dissociative of his old self, and seems like he's turned over a new leaf. And it has to be sincere it can't just be like a you know him showing up and putting on a mask for a fight you know it's not going to work like that anymore. delegation against him and had a settlement. And he put out a statement after that in which he says, he acknowledges in the statement that his lawyers advised him against saying this. But the statement was an apology where he said, you know, I thought this was a consensual encounter. I believe now that she did not see it as a consensual encounter. And it seemed like a very sincere apology and he also seemed like his life changed after that and he seemed like like more serious and focused again he was also much younger and

still had much more athletic prime ahead of him to where he could go out after that and win a championship and then people are going to kind of remember that more than they'll remember those allegations but he also handled it much much better it's really hard to imagine conor mcgregor at this point doing all those things you just said and seeming sincere about it well that's well thank you so much for uh joining us here today all the crackheads watching on the lawyer feed a very different tone and today's show i'm sorry ben this had to be your debut serious subject matter youious subject matter. I didn't get to tap into that Ben Folk's humor at all today.

Yeah, you got to have me back on so I can have some fun. Jeez. I swear to God, he's hilarious. This guy. When he's not so serious, that is.

Yeah. I mean, we did have our first ever recorded hockey reference, I believe, in this podcast. I believe that was for you, Ben. That was a nod.

That was a nod. Of course it was. Won't be the last if you have me on here. We definitely want more Ben folks on here. Thank you to everyone for their patience today. I know I had to get through a lot there at the start. We were reacting to this news and trying to get the story out in the minutes leading up to us going live here.

So I may have been a bit frazzled. The reaction to this will pour into the coming months, weeks, months, days, possibly years. You can keep up with the story. We will continue to cover it over on Uncrowned. The great Shaheen Al-Shadi has been helping us with everything we're putting out over there. I'm sure the story will continue to develop today, tomorrow, as I've said, over the next coming weeks and months. Thank you so much to the great Chuck Mendenhall of Uncrowned, Ben Foulkes of Uncrowned, and the great Comain Event Podcast.

Shout out to you all for doing this. We love having you on. We will be back for a more pleasant conversation in the future. Keep it on Uncrowned. We love you very much. See you next Friday. Mwah. day. you you you you