The UFC is “incredibly” disappointed with lightweight fighter Conor McGregor said Lawrence Epstein, COO of the sporting body.
“We’ve come so far in legitimizing the sport and growing our business,” the exec told Cheddar in an in interview Friday. “[His behavior] is just not representative of who we are.”
McGregor was arrested Thursday for an altercation in Brooklyn where he attacked a bus full of fellow UFC fighters, injuring two of them.
“The first thing that’s got to happen is a criminal investigation,” Epstein said. Once that is over, the UFC will decide what to do internally and the option of kicking the fighter out of the UFC is not off the table, he said.
McGregor is known for his flamboyant and provocative antics. For example, he swiped Floyd Mayweather Jr. with racist and demeaning slurs ahead of their highly anticipated UFC-boxing crossover match last year.
The league, which celebrated its 25th anniversary Friday, hosts UFC 223 Saturday at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
Since its inception, it’s [evolved](https://cheddar.com/videos/how-the-ufc-has-changed-over-its-25-year-history) from being a “very spectacle-oriented, niche, U.S.-centric sport to...a truly global brand,” said Epstein.
He added that the body has worked very hard at making it a safe and regulated space with no tolerance for fighters like McGregor.
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/cheddar-steps-into-the-octagon-with-ufc).
Michael Jenkins, host of 'The Daily Tip' provides his best plays for Week 13 of the NFL season, Amanda Casey Vance of Bookies.com breaks down this weekend's conference championship slate and makes her pick for which teams will make the Playoff, and VSIN's Amal Shah makes sense of what has been a very unpredictable NFL season thus far.
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Amal Shah, host of VSin's 'Odds On', joins Cheddar Bets to break down his favorite dark horse teams in each conference and how to be successful when live betting.
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Amanda Casey Vance, Sports Betting Analyst for Bookies.com, joins Cheddar Bets to break down a massive College Football Championship Game week, and what the final CFP Ranking will look like.
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Major League Baseball entered its first owner implemented lockout in nearly 30 years after the league and the player's association were unable to come to an agreement on a new labor deal.
Jill and Carlo discuss what appears to be the beginning of the end of Roe v. Wade, another victim dies following the school shooting in Michigan, Omicron in the U.S., Trump's Covid chronology and more.
Jill and Carlo cover the latest on Omicron, another school shooting in America and more. Plus, bidding farewell to 'transitory' inflation, and the controversy surrounding 'Lovely Bones' author Alice Sebold.
Major League Baseball and its players' union remain at odds over a new collective bargaining agreement, and if a deal isn't reached by 11:59 P.M. eastern time Wednesday, the league will experience its first work stoppage in more than two decades. Ryan Fagan, Senior MLB Writer at The Sporting News, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where he discusses the impact of such an event on both teams and players across baseball.
After a nearly 30-year saga, the New York Islanders have officially found a new home. The NHL team kicked off their very first game at the state of the art UBS arena earlier this month, bringing fans together in Belmont Park, NY.
The over $1 billion dollar project comes as the city attempts to return to normalcy. Tom Naratil, President of the Americas at UBS and Jon Ledecky Co-Owner of the New York Islanders joined Cheddar's Opening Bell to discuss the new beginning.
