He was brash, he was loud, he was McGregor. It really didn't matter whether his taunts made sense or not, he was there to speak as much as possible and gain as much interest in the fight as possible. And as tends to happen, he easily accomplished what he was there to do.
Despite what has been suggested, that didn't include the use of a racial slur. And if it turns out that it did include the racial slur that's being claimed, we'll run around the streets of Rio apologising on behalf of Ireland.
The issue of race and McGregor has been to the fore in recent weeks with Floyd Mayweather's suggestions that the Dubliner's success is inherently linked to racism. McGregor's response to that was swift, he even addressed it during last night's press conference, something which would have made any utterance of a racial remark, highly unadvised.
The slur in question is 'spick' and quite a few people are suggesting that McGregor used it, stating 'I'm the king, you're a spick'. He's not one to air on the politically correct side of the line, take the Dennis Siver 'nazi' incident for example, but in this case, we're 100% sure he's in the clear.
@kenearlys I'll retract if he doesn't but he says "you're a", moves his mouth that way... It seems pretty clear!
— Miguel Delaney (@MiguelDelaney) January 21, 2016
The debate has been branching out from there significantly and it's easy to see why. A brief look at the footage doesn't look particularly good.
In reality, as many have pointed out, it's an incredible quirk of timing. The words that are heard in order certainly do sound like 'I'm the king, you're a spick' and the movement of McGregor's mouth doesn't help either but it's fairly clear what's going on when you give it a thorough listen.
Given that he's rather keen on interrupting, McGregor was doing what he does best while Dos Anjos was getting a bit pissed off before saying, yeah, go, speak. The 'speak' just so happens to come out during McGregor's sentence which subsequently ends with 'you're a... bum'.
That's certainly what we're hearing/seeing. If someone manages to convince us otherwise, we'll start getting the apology together.
