Report: Conor McGregor investigated for second sexual assault allegation in Ireland

Conor McGregor once again is making international news – and not for a good reason.

According to a new report in The New York Times, McGregor is being investigated for a sexual assault in his home country of Ireland.

It is the second sexual assault investigation he is facing in Ireland. The first case first was reported by The Times in March. McGregor has not been charged in either case, though he was arrested in January for an alleged assault that took place in December 2018, questioned, and released pending the investigation – which is standard procedure in Ireland.

In the new allegation, The Times reports that a woman in her 20s was sexually assaulted outside a Dublin pub while in a vehicle this past week. The Times report says McGregor has not been charged or interviews by Irish police in the case.

“Conor McGregor is frequently the subject of rumors. He emphatically denies any report accusing him of sexual assault,” a McGregor publicist told The Times in a statement via email.

Ireland’s police force, the Garda, told The Times in a statement that investigations were proceeding and no arrests have been made.

Ireland’s laws don’t allow individuals charged with sexual assault or rape to be named until they are convicted. To get around issues of potential libel, news outlets in Ireland in both cases typically have referred to the suspect as a “well-known Irish sports star.”

The same day news of the first alleged sexual assault was reported by The Times in March, McGregor abruptly announced his retirement from MMA. But he has walked that back in recent months almost to the point of most forgetting it even happened.

Most recently, he started a campaign to fight former lightweight champion Frankie Edgar, but UFC president Dana White said that fight will not happen.

White has stayed largely mum on the first alleged sexual assault, though in August he said he was under the impression that it wasn’t McGregor.

“I know zero about that,” White said. “To be honest with you, the back-and-forth that I’ve had with him about that (is) that it’s not him, that it’s somebody else. So I don’t know.”

McGregor has been no stranger to brushes with the law in recent years. In April 2018, he showed up in Brooklyn at UFC 223, where rival Khabib Nurmagomedov was scheduled to fight. After being let into a back entrance to Barclays Center, McGregor and a crew of people went after a bus carrying UFC fighters, including Nurmagomedov and his camp. McGregor threw a hand truck through a bus window and left two fighters injured – and subsequently off that week’s event.

He wrapped up the criminal case from that infamous incident earlier this year with a plea deal to avoid jail time.

In March in Miami Beach, he was charged with strong-arm robbery and criminal mischief after he took a person’s phone outside a hotel and smashed it, then left with it. That case ultimately wound up with reduced charges, and a civil suit was dropped.

In April, McGregor was caught on video punching a man at a Dublin pub after he apparently rejected McGregor’s offer of a serving of his Proper Twelve whiskey brand. McGregor later did an interview with UFC broadcast partner ESPN and apologized for the incident, admitting it was him in the video.

McGregor’s rise to MMA superstardom was in full force when he became the first simultaneous two-division champion in UFC history in November 2016. He stopped Eddie Alvarez to win the lightweight title at Madison Square Garden in New York to add to the featherweight belt he won in December 2015 with a 13-second knockout of long-reigning champion Jose Aldo.

McGregor was stripped of the featherweight belt not long after he won the lightweight title so the UFC could move on with the division. Ultimately, he never defended the lightweight belt, either. Instead, he took a highly lucrative boxing match against undefeated champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. in August 2017 that reportedly was worth in the $100 million range for him.

After the infamous bus incident in Brooklyn, Nurmagomedov became the lightweight champion, which set up a fight with McGregor at UFC 229 in Las Vegas a little more than a year ago. After Nurmagomedov submitted McGregor in the fourth round, he jumped over the cage and went after McGregor teammate Dillon Danis cageside, which set off a melee that wound up with both fighters suspended and fined by the Nevada Athletic Commission.

But despite his lack of MMA fights the past three years, McGregor remains arguably the UFC’s most bankable star – even if people like White now admit that others, like Nurmagomedov, may be passing him by in the cage.