Former MMA fighter Paddy Holohan was a guest on Saturday night's Tommy Tiernan Show on RTÉ One.
Holohan, who retired from fighting in late 2016 due to a medical condition, told the host why he had named his son after him.
"12 years ago, I made a promise to my son when he was born that I would do anything and everything to make it; that we would be in the place that we needed to be," said Holohan.
I named him Tiernan. I was a massive fan of you and you gave me a massive lift sometimes at times when I was down and it was dark.
I like your comedy in the way that it is dark. It's funny sometimes to laugh at that darkness too. I came through a part of my life where I went to the Ultimate Fighter. It's basically Big Brother but you fight each other to get them out of the house. It's a little bit more extreme, you know.
I was asked what effect did I think the Irish could have the UFC. I recited the time where you talk about the Irish, 'they don't come to invade, they come to infest'. I used this, Tommy. I robbed it!
I proceeded to tell Dana White: 'Listen, one of us is after getting in last week'. This was a week after Conor [McGregor] was after getting signed for the UFC, nobody would have known him. I was like, 'We're here. What we do is we land and there's phone numbers and sleeping bags'.
Dana White's response was: 'This is the kid. I want this kid.'
"and I named him...Tiernan"@PaddyHolohanMMA tells Tommy something very special.#TommyTiernanShow pic.twitter.com/NNiFSL1kGA
— RTÉ One (@RTEOne) January 4, 2020
Holohan added that his great achievement in life is being a good father to his son.
"I'm a good dad," he said.
"When Tiernan was handed to me, I remember getting this crazy feeling, it washed through my body. When I was giving him his first bottle, I remember feeling so close to him and telling him we were going to make it.
"To me, making it wasn't to be famous; making it was literally being able to have a home and a nice place to live. Unfortunately, we're in a country where it's harder now than it was when I was a kid."
Earlier this year, the 31-year-old was elected as a Sinn Féin councillor for Tallaght South.
"It's common sense," he said when asked how he engages with his constituents.
"I have a lot more life experience than a lot of these guys. They don't know what it's like to come through the system. The people who should be navigating the system are the people who came through the system. They know what's going on.
"There's a lot of guys out there who will stand up in the Dáil, say stuff and they know zero about being in that situation. When they're talking about this stuff, it's never going to concern them - they'll never know what it's really like. To me, I know what it's like. I came through it."
You can watch the full interview on the RTÉ Player.
