Conor McGregor says the internet got him wrong. After a clip spread showing him in hysterics around the time Raul Rosas Jr. submitted Colby Covington, McGregor posted on X that the footage had been doctored.
“This is false and fully edited,” he wrote late Tuesday night.
His version goes like this. He had a great night at the show in Rome and admits he was laughing at some point, but he says the clip was spliced in to make it look like he was laughing at Covington getting finished. “I do not laugh at competing men and women. I respect them! Win lose draw!” he wrote, before tipping his cap to everyone who competed.
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The clip in question came from Spinnin Backfist, which posted that McGregor was “dying laughing” after the submission. Championship Rounds pushed out its own version of his reaction within minutes. Neither account offered anything beyond the video itself, and McGregor’s denial landed a few hours later.
The result that started all of this deserves its own paragraph. Rosas took the Covington fight on short notice and, per Championship Rounds, tapped him in 40 seconds. Covington has made a career out of being the guy who drags opponents into deep water for 25 minutes. He didn’t get a single minute to try it here.
McGregor’s night in Rome produced more than one viral camera moment. Happy Punch shared footage of him watching a fighter go down with a bad leg injury in the first round, captioned “That’s the face of a man who’s reliving an experience.” No words from McGregor on that one.
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The Fighting Future Part
Sportskeeda ran a headline Thursday saying McGregor dropped a major update on his fighting future after his last UFC outing. The details of that update weren’t in the material we had, so I’m not going to guess at a date, an opponent or what he said about his contract. In the two X posts we reviewed from his account this week, he didn’t name an opponent or a date.
What he did post, besides the denial, was some love for Jean-Paul Lebosnoyani. Ariel Helwani shared Lebosnoyani’s story of training with McGregor at 17, when he got called to the gym right after the biggest meal of his life and spent about two weeks rolling jiu-jitsu with him before McGregor’s fight with Dillon Danis. Lebosnoyani said McGregor messaged him through his career, including when he signed with the UFC. “He would pull up to the gym in two Rolls-Royces, and the second he stepped on the mat, that whole persona, the whole ego was just gone,” Lebosnoyani said.
McGregor’s reply: “True martial artist is Jean Paul!”
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My take: credit to McGregor for answering the clip straight and fast, with no cryptic emoji and no publicist. The story of the night, though, is a short-notice replacement who walked in and finished Colby Covington in 40 seconds, and the guy in the crowd getting the headlines should be the one booking himself a date next.
