After last month’s UFC Poland, UFC superstar Conor McGregor was filmed backstage consoling his friend Artem Lobov after a loss to Andre Fili. In the video, McGregor can be heard using a homophobic slur several times to describe Fili.
In an interview with RTÉ’s Late Late Show this Friday, McGregor apologized for using the slu by saying that he did not mean to disrespect the LGBT community by using the word.
“I was whispering in his ear and I was speaking on that and I said what I said. I meant no disrespect to nobody of the LGBT community. I didn’t mean no disrespect. You’d swear I was screaming at two people of the same sex kissing. I campaigned when we were trying to get same-sex marriage legalised, I was campaigning for that.
“It is another one where things just get blown out and they love to just . . . any chance they get they love to throw me under the bus. It is what it is. I’ll just say sorry for what I said and that’s it and try to move on from it,” he said.
“I have to put my hands up there. I was watching a fighter, a sparring partner, a training partner, a friend, a brother of mine who has given his health, his body health, his brain health, everything to help me prepare for fights to give my brain health and my body health to entertain the public.
“That’s the fighter I was going to watch and support. I witnessed him lose a fight, and a potential career-ending fight, in a manner where the opponent was stalling and running away and I was upset,” he said.
For the past year McGregor has come under fire for his racist language during promotion for the Mayweather fight, and now he has to deal with backlash from the LGBT community.
McGregor