Daniel Cormier isn’t sure if Conor McGregor’s image will ever recover from his ongoing sexual assault case.
This past Friday, Conor McGregor was found liable for a 2018 sexual assault of a woman at a Dublin hotel. As a result, the jury ordered McGregor pay approximately $260,000 in damages to the victim, Nikita Hand.
With Proper No. Twelve parent company Proximo Spirits announcing that it will no longer feature McGregor in association with the brand, and IO Interactive also announcing that McGregor’s character will be removed from the popular “Hitman” video game series, Cormier says McGregor will likely continue facing real-life consequences.
It’s unfortunate because this is one of the biggest stars that this sport has ever seen. We’ve never seen anything like a Conor McGregor in mixed martial arts,” Cormier said on his YouTube channel. “For a guy of that stature to come from our sport and be tied to something as bad as this, it really does suck. There are going to be some long-term effects from this.”
Cormier clarifies that he isn’t trying to judge Conor McGregor since he doesn’t really know what happened that night. McGregor’s longtime fiancée, Dee Devlin, made it very clear that she is standing by her man, but with Conor McGregor being previously involved in sexual assault cases, Cormier is unsure what to make of the situation.
“When I hear things like this, sometimes (celebrities) are targeted – especially guys that carry that type of cache, that type of name recognition,” Cormier said. “But with Conor, it seems like there has been more than one instance where stuff like this has come up. Like I said, I am not judging this man. I don’t know.
“I wasn’t there. You know who knows? Conor and that girl. But, this isn’t the first time that we have seen something like that so, you’re a little less inclined to be, ‘Oh, this is a gold digger that’s trying to do this.’ But do know that as long as there have been sports, there have been instances like this.”
Former UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov and current champion Islam Makhachev jumped at the opportunity to take shots at McGregor. Cormier was especially surprised with Makhachev’s reaction, but acknowledges that there is deep-rooted hatred between both sides.
“Honestly, it seems a little bit off-brand for Islam,” Cormier said. “I know the boys. The boys love to talk trash. The boys love to mess around. The boys will tell you what they feel. It feels off-brand, but in this case, I feel like it could be because this rivalry between these boys from Dagestan and Conor McGregor has been as nasty as any rivalry as we have seen in mixed martial arts.”