Louis Grasse/PxImages/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Daniel Cormier thinks Conor McGregor’s taken the trash talk way too far.
The former UFC champion and current analyst responded to McGregor’s since-deleted “Covid is good and father is evil?” tweet, presumably about Khabib Nurmagomedov’s father Abdulmanap, who died from COVID-19 complications in July 2020.
Cormier blasted McGregor for the comments during his ESPN show with Ryan Clark (h/t Damon Martin of MMA Fighting):
“I get shock value and I get trying to get people to talk but way too far. To the point that I immediately called Khabib last night and said, ‘Are you OK?’ Asking him if he’s OK after having to see that, especially with no ability to do anything about it again. He spoke to my kids at my wrestling program the other day and said he was never happier than when he got to fight McGregor on the day. Because for so long, he wanted to get his hands on Conor and beat Conor up.
“Well, he can’t do that no more cause he’s not a prizefighter anymore. So now he just has to kind of swallow that. Way too far. Honestly, when Conor does stuff like that, it’s hard to understand how there’s still this mass amount of people that support that type of behavior.”
McGregor was apparently responding to the following tweet from Nurmagomedov, who posted it after McGregor broke his leg versus Dustin Poirier at UFC 264 and lost by TKO:
And Cormier couldn’t believe McGregor would stoop to insulting Nurmagomedov’s deceased father.
“When you’re dealing with death and COVID and all these other things that we’ve dealt with over the last year and a half, that’s all off limits,” he said. “We talked about wives and families being off limits, but when you’re talking about a man’s everything—Khabib’s dad was his everything—and you’re talking about him being gone today due to something that has been so terrible for our entire world, you use that in a sense to get back?”
McGregor’s trash talk has gone beyond the pale in the past. Before his fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2017, he at one point told his opponent to “Dance for me, boy” while Mayweather shadowboxed.
And when there was backlash to those racist comments and others, McGregor doubled down, perpetuating stereotypes.
“All of the media seem to be saying I’m against Black people. … Do they not know I’m half Black?” he said at the time. “I’m half Black from the belly button down.”
He also brought Poirier’s wife, Jolie, into his web of trash talk before UFC 264 in July:
He also brought up Jolie—who flipped off McGregor after the fight—in his post-bout comments.
“Your wife is in my DMs,” McGregor said. “Hey, baby, hit me back up on chat later on. We’ll be at the after-party, the Wynn nightclub, baby. [Inaudible], you little hoe. F–k him.”
There’s trash talk, and then there are remarks like that. For Cormier, and surely many others in the sport, McGregor has lost the plot.
“Absolutely crossed the line. I think when stuff like that is being said, it’s a cry for help,” he said of the comments about Nurmagomedov’s father. “Conor has all the money in the world, he has all the fame, but now when you start to dig at that level, it’s like somebody needs to get to McGregor and help him to start to kind of re-shift his mind and his focus and get him back to a better place. It’s unfortunate.”
More Stories
11 Men’s Colognes Women Love: The Best Fragrances To Attract Females 2023
Meet the New Fruit Babies Bestsellers Kit
Advice for Starting a Retail Business