The Savage Truth: McGregor vs. UFC ‘Civil War’

Editor’s note: The views and opinions expressed below are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sherdog.com, its affiliates and sponsors or its parent company, Evolve Media. The thing about civil wars is that they rarely, if ever, are tied off completely, even when hostilities have subsided. It is usually an uneasy ceasefire that brings about the halt in open combat, followed by a whole lot of hurt feelings on both sides of the arbitrary border, more noticeably on the perceived losing side in most cases. The bad blood or festering wounds that sparked the conflict are generally still present, if not worse, after the parties have slugged it out. It takes a lot of time and good will to cool the boiling tempers and heal the ills that caused the feud to explode in the first place. With Conor McGregor making his case on the ESPN “Sunday Conversation” with host Kenny Mayne over the weekend, it was interesting to hear McGregor couch the nature of his quarrel with the UFC as a “civil war.” Far be it from me to put any words in the featherweight champion’s mouth — who knows how careful he was in choosing those words — but it is hard to imagine all of the issues the Irishman had were dissolved over a single dinner with his employers. There was a lot of money left on the table with UFC 200 rolling off the production line minus the company’s biggest star. Coming off their reported historic pay-per-view performance, it would have been a shocker if McGregor and Nate Diaz couldn’t have outpaced their first encounter at both the box office and at the PPV terminal. Something big was going on behind the scenes, and no matter how many times we were told the relationship was “fine,” the fact that McGregor was yanked off the marquee for not heading to Vegas for a presser and commercial shoot spoke volumes. Now, we’ve heard McGregor’s side of the story, and despite the fact he says things are better — note: better is not anywhere near great, or even good — his biggest regret seems to be letting his emotions dictate his actions. It seemed that he …

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