Conor McGregor's Fallon appearance is the lowest blow
From court room to The Tonight Show sofa before you can say 'surgically removed tampon'.
*****CONTENT WARNING: Sexual assault*****
When US chat show host Jimmy Fallon asked pro fighter Conor McGregor this week what he’d been up to since they last saw each other, the Irishman neglected to mention the lengthy civil case he’d fought and lost in Ireland in 2024 which concluded that he was liable for sexually assaulting a woman.
It was rape. The extremely distressing details of his victim’s officially recorded medical state afterwards seem to confirm that. The jury certainly thought so.
The woman in question was tended to by paramedics after her encounter with McGregor and a friend at a hotel in Dublin. The medics found that not only was she badly bruised and had marks on her neck from strangulation, she needed to have a tampon surgically removed from her vagina.
Reports of the case, including this one from the BBC, mention that when interviewed by the police, McGregor said ‘no comment’ around 100 times.
His subsequent appeal was thrown out and he was ordered to pay his victim over £200,000 costs.
He’s since been accused by another woman of “sexual battery” in Miami in the US in 2023 and that civil case is still ongoing.
So, Fallon’s matey banter and sycophantic questions about how quickly McGregor could knock out an opponent rather left my jaw hanging. He made sure to tell the audience that the two of them had gone out drinking after the fighter’s last visit to his show. These men are friends, he was keen to point out.
What happens in the brains of some people? Fallon is clearly enamoured by McGregor, giggling and wowing at this thug’s ability to cause injury with his fists, but he can’t be unaware of the allegations made against him.
I keep coming back to that chilling contrast between their jokey repartee on Fallon’s sofa, McGregor’s grin as wide as the Hudson, and the unrepentant mute in police custody, repeating the same phrase over and over. No comment.
In perhaps the most shocking moment of the whole thing, as he sat down, McGregor presented Fallon with a box of his own brand cigars. They’re called ‘Unapologetic’. Is he actually joking?
If even half of the things in this Instagram reel are true, it paints a very grim picture of the man indeed.
The Irish account, Reel Takes, goes on a tour of supposed wrongdoing by the fighter, claiming he was booked because the head of guest booking at The Tonight Show has alleged affiliations with Israel (McGregor is vocal in his support of Israel) and mentions several other times McGregor has been accused of violent and/or sexual misconduct.
It also goes on to make some pretty wild claims about those standing up to McGregor seeing attacks on their loved ones and property, but this is just one man on the internet and none of his claims have been proven.
A jury has agreed though that McGregor raped and strangled and beat a woman. That’s on the record. She was taken to hospital in an ambulance because of what he did to her. He’s now, officially, a sex offender. Just like sex attacker, Donald Trump.
Another friend who has worked in broadcasting for a long time suggested that booking him for the show might have been a “political” decision over and above any specific sides in a far-off conflict.
So essentially, The Tonight Show think that refusing to book someone who is popular - and McGregor still is in America despite being as popular as a hot turd in Ireland - will cause people who like him to take that as a value judgement about them.
It’s the thing I keep repeating in articles here (sorry if this is getting monotonous now). When you tell someone their hero is a rapist, they react as though you’re telling them that their judgement is bad.
It immediately feels personal and never, ever goes down well.
And, conversely, in the case of The Tonight Show, producers won’t want to alienate McGregor’s huge fan base (at last count he had 46 million followers on Instagram) when ratings for late night are tanking, so they’ll take the hit of a few days of vloggers sticking the boot in.
And it’ll probably work. Most peoples’ memories are short for this kind of thing.
Personally, I can’t think of a single reason to watch Jimmy Fallon again. I hope he actually says something about this rather than taking the coward’s way and just keeping his head down til the storm passes.
Because, from where I’m sitting, at the moment it’s a firm Fuck you, Jimmy.
Given his normalising of "Donal" ( I hope you did that on purpose, I like it ) I would assume he doesn't care. In my experience, proximity to fame and money tends to test one's integrity & it's never, ever for the better.