UFC president Dana White believes Conor McGregor crossed the line between banter and the sort of talk which has no place in any sport in general by making a string of disparaging remarks about Dustin Poirier's wife Jolie.
McGregor, 32, is no stranger to controversy. The former UFC lightweight champion from Ireland, once considered the archetypal replacement for Mike Tyson, infamously talked a bunch of smack about Khabib Nurmagomedov, even labelling his manager Ali Abdelaziz as "a f------ snitch, terrorist rat" in an explosive rant.
In the build up to the trilogy fight, The Notorious stepped it up yet another gear by claiming that he was hoping to not simply win on Saturday night, but to maim Poirier in the process.
The Irish superstar said: 'I'm gonna make this man pay with his life'.
McGregor also threatened to turn his rival into a "corpse" as he claimed the American would be carried out of the Octagon on a stretcher.
But McGregor suffered a first-round defeat to Poirier, 32, in the main event of UFC 264 before putting Poirier's wife Jolie on full blast at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
“Your wife is in my DMs,” McGregor said in his post-fight interview. “Hey baby, hit me back up on chat later on. We’ll be at the after party, the Wynn nightclub, baby. [Inaudible], you little h--. F--- him.”
McGregor may have become famous for his trash talk, but White thinks he took things a step too far.
“I didn’t hear one word of it,” White said to reporters at the UFC 264 post-fight press conference. "Ah, yeah – I don’t like that. Yeah, that’s not good.
"Leave people’s families and wives and all that stuff out of it.
"Family has nothing to do with it.”
Head coach John Kavanagh has confirmed that McGregor has broken his leg with his star pupil set to return home for rehabilitation.
He said: “He throws a leg kick, and then he threw a teep, that’s clearly where the fracture happened.
"He threw an aggressive kick, Dustin shelled with the lead hand, and the foot wraps around the elbow in a similar fashion to [Anderson] Silva and [Chris] Weidman.
"They wrapped their foot around the shin, [McGregor] wrapped his shin around the elbow. He’s in the hospital right now. I’ll be heading over there after this to check in.
"It’s a bitter pill to swallow. This sport is the highest highs and the lowest lows. We’ve got to take some time to assess what the next move is.
"Obviously rehab and recovery is where it’s at.”
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