The Nevada State Athletic Commission might have made an enemy out of Conor McGregor.
Earlier this week, ‘The Notorious’ was fined a staggering $150,000 for his bottle-throwing shenanigans at the UFC 202 pre-fight press conference in Las Vegas.
McGregor, who arrived 35 minutes late to the conference, engaged in a bottle throwing war with Nate Diaz after the Californian suddenly decided to leave the premises with his brother Nick. Full cans of Monster Energy were also lobbed across the room and Diaz’ teammate, Jake Shields, also looked to throw a laptop at one point during the frenzy.
UFC president Dana White claimed that McGregor had no interest in fighting in Nevada again, and the Irishman said as much himself in a recent interview with Rolling Stone.
“I don’t see Nevada in my future, for the foreseeable future is how I see it,” McGregor said. “I’m free to do what I want. … I’m good. I’m good. New York, New York. That’s what I think.”
New York is where McGregor will take on lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez in the promotion’s debut at Madison Square Garden on Nov 12.
Not only does McGregor plan on boycotting Nevada, but the featherweight champion plans to make it as difficult as possible for the NSAC to collect the $150,000 fine.
“I thought they might respect [McGregor calling in] a little bit more,” McGregor says. “I owned up. I man’d up. I’m here. I apologized. I’m not trying to blame nobody, although they fired the rounds off first. I didn’t think they would even go that route because I didn’t think this was like a real thing. Are they going to come and arrest me or what the fuck is that? I wanted to give them the respect and I felt they would have respected that but they didn’t. So, whatever. It is what it is. Good luck trying to get it.”
Diaz, who instigated the bottle-throwing incident, will be punished by the NSAC at a later date, but McGregor doesn’t want to see the commission make an example out of him.
“I do not wish to see Nate get any more or any less than me,” McGregor said. “I don’t want to see either of us have something like this happen. But we’ll see. I don’t know. If they went that way on me I don’t know what way they’re going to go on him. He threw the bottle first, but I don’t wish he get more than me or anything like that. I just wish we’d get it sorted out and get on with it and carry on.”
Older brother Nick Diaz was fined $100,000 after one of his three drug tests from UFC 183 came back positive for marijuana metabolites – the two other tests, conducted by a WADA-accredited lab, came back clean. Diaz has yet to pay the full fine.
Bottle-throwing antics and NSAC fines aside, McGregor will focus his efforts on UFC 205, where he will meet Eddie Alvarez in the main event. The pay-per-view extravaganza takes places on November 12 at Madison Square Garden in New York.
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