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MMA

11th Apr 2018

UFC veteran’s comment about Conor McGregor sparks ugly back-and-forth

Turned south very quickly

Ben Kiely

Conor McGregor

You can’t really blame Conor McGregor for this nasty exchange.

When Conor McGregor and his crew stormed the Barclays Center and threw projectiles at Khabib Nurmagomedov’s bus, it became the focus of the MMA community.

One man who weighed in was Tyson Griffin. The 14-fight UFC veteran, now retired, sent a tweet out mocking McGregor’s legal problems. He questioned how it would affect his sponsorship deals, likening it to the situation of Jon Jones.

His fatal mistake was tagging the former UFC light heavyweight champion in the tweet.

Firing back

In 2012, Jones became the first MMA fighter to be sponsored by Nike globally. With this deal, he also became the first MMA star to have his own line of shoes.

After that infamous brawl with Danel Cormier at a promotional event for UFC 178, Jones stated at the disciplinary hearing that the sports brand behemoths had dropped him over the incident. He later withdrew these comments, confirming that he had not been dropped by Nike over the altercation. Instead, he claimed they had parted ways through a mutual agreement.

So when Griffin tweeted about it, it clearly struck a nerve with Jones. He felt obliged to respond.

Digging out the DMs

If you thought the tone of the conversation hit rock bottom when Jones compared Griffin to his penis, you would be dead wrong.

Griffin dug out a private conversation he had with Jones, took screenshots and posted them on his public profile.

Unsurprisingly, Jones was far from impressed.

He admitted that he meant every word of that private text conversation, confessing that he enjoyed ‘shitting on’ Griffin.

So the defecation continued.

Jones is currently ineligible to compete in MMA as he deals with his second USADA violation.