Malachy Clerkin: In bleak times, the sheer comedy value of Conor McGregor is to be treasured

What a relief it was this week to be reminded that Conor McGregor is apparently still a thing. Still in there mixing it up and bringing the chaos, like a human version of that emoji with the wonky eyes and the tongue lolling to the right. Never has he been more necessary or more vital.

Seriously. The world is grim and the world is bleak. Can’t take the gruesome images from the Middle East? Here, go listen to three days of the Government trying to buy your vote with your own money. Need a break from our politicians? Well, Trump is 50 points clear in the Republican primary so how does that grab you? Everything is burning, basically.

Where have you gone, Ol’ Notorious — a nation turns its lonely eyes to you. Oh, there you are. What have you been up to, buddy? Well, apart from that. And that. Oh, and definitely that. Anything? Anything at all that we can talk about without immediately inducing a cardiac incident among our lawyers?

For the uninitiated — or indeed for the 99 per cent of people who have had better things to be doing with themselves over the past two years — McGregor’s time in the Octagon appeared to be done after losing twice in six months to Dustin Poirier back in 2021

The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is moving on from the United States Anti-Doping Agency (Usada) and is creating its own drug-testing programme in a feud that involves the former champion. The mixed martial arts organisation also sent a legal letter to Usada to demand a retraction and apology for a statement it issued on Wednesday regarding the end of its deal with the UFC. In a statement to the Associated Press, Usada chief executive Travis Tygart said: “We stand by our statement and our credibility.”

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Hupyaboya! Just when we need a hero, there’s the streetwise Hercules himself. Though McGregor has neither kicked ass nor taken names in quite a while — official fight record: one win in the past seven years — he has long since known that only suckers tie all their worth to what happens when the actual punches start rolling. Far better to make bank from all the mist and spray and bullshit artistry that surrounds the fight game.

The latest to-do has been simmering for a while. For the uninitiated — or indeed for the 99 per cent of people who have had better things to be doing with themselves over the past two years — McGregor’s time in the Octagon appeared to be done after losing twice in six months to Dustin Poirier back in 2021. He broke his leg in the second of those fights that July and everyone presumed that was the end of the road.

There seemed no good reason to think otherwise. A few weeks before the second Poirier fight, Forbes announced McGregor as the highest-paid sportsperson in the world. Having sold his stake in his whiskey business the previous year for a cool $150 million (€143 million), he had comfortably outearned everyone from Messi to Ronaldo to LeBron over the previous 12 months.

Now that he’d been stopped twice on the bounce, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to keep identifying as a fighter. He was getting old, he was getting slow, he was getting beaten

And yet here he was, doing the one thing that most of us have the sense to avoid, regardless of where we are on the list. Getting knocked on his ass with the whole world watching. Mega-wealth doesn’t always have to be life-changing but the least it surely means is that nobody makes you take a punch for money anymore.

Now that he’d been stopped twice on the bounce, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to keep identifying as a fighter. He was getting old, he was getting slow, he was getting beaten. Why do that when he could choose not to?

Even now, the reasons aren’t immediately obvious. Boredom seems as reasonable a bet as any. Maybe once you’ve duffed up an oul’ lad in a pub and a mascot at a basketball game, you come to decide you’re better off throwing punches that won’t land you in court. Maybe all those out-of-court settlements down the years have eaten away at the pile and he’s fresh out of whiskey recipes. Maybe he just knows no other way.

[ Conor McGregor knocks out Miami Heat mascot in bizarre NBA finals promotion ]

Whatever the reason, he’s been promising/threatening a comeback for the best part of a year. And as a precursor to his return, Usada insisted that he rejoin the drug-testing pool for mixed martial arts fighters at least six months out from his first fight back. If you’re wondering why he was ever allowed to leave it in the first place, you’re not alone.

Once he broke his leg, the UFC removed him from the pool, essentially giving him licence to live as a civilian when it comes to drug testing rather than as a professional athlete. Since he at no stage actually retired, it has never been clear why they would make such an exception for him and not for other fighters. Nor, more to the point, why McGregor would need one.

Anyway, it all came to a froth this week. Usada announced that their decade-long relationship with the UFC “had become untenable, given the statements made by UFC leaders and others questioning Usada’s principled stance that McGregor not be allowed to fight without being in the testing pool for at least six months”.

The UFC hit back, with their ever-charming chief executive Dana White calling the Usada statement “scumbagism”. And hey, when a chap who last came to most people’s attention for slapping his wife across the face on New Year’s Eve starts talking scumbagism, you know he knows whereof he speaks.

As for our boy Conor, he hasn’t had a whole pile to say on the matter, except to post a swimming emoji on Wednesday (to indicate he’s back in the pool, see). Otherwise, his public statements this week have amounted to pics of him with the family on a yacht, his vow to pray to God to solve war in the Middle East and also his warm congrats to Saudi Arabia on the news that they will host their first UFC show on March 2nd, 2024. Just the five months after he rejoined the testing pool, maths fans.

All of it is thoroughly, eye-wateringly preposterous, of course. Drug-testing, yacht-lolling, sportswashing, peace-pleading, the whole ridiculous bit. Life playing out on an elevated plane of nonsense. And God bless him for it.

In dark times, the sheer comedy of Conor McGregor is to be treasured.