Conor McGregor arrest: How a purported fresh start disintegrated into the depressingly familiar

As laughable as it may already seem after this morning’s depressingly familiar headlines, this week was meant to represent a fresh start for the troubled former UFC world champion Conor McGregor. A bright new dawn finally free of the legal troubles that repeatedly threatened to ruin his once dazzling career.

Only a few days ago, the Irishman completed his court-mandated five days of community service after pleading guilty to a single violation of disorderly conduct in Brooklyn criminal court, last July. Two months previous he had been caught on camera — wild, wide-eyed and ranting — hurling a metal hand truck into the window of a charter bus full of his contemporaries at a UFC press event.

As part of his punishment, McGregor worked at several Brooklyn churches among the desperate and downtrodden. He faced no jail time, was handed no criminal record, and his travel visa was not affected. Laughably, he was also instructed to attend an anger management programme lasting one to three days. Looks like that one didn’t work out too well.

With those commitments fulfilled, fans began to grow excited over his return to competition. A fight with long-term adversary Donald Cerrone was said to be in the works. A rematch with Khabib Nurmagomedov hovered lucratively in the distance beyond that. It seemed as though McGregor had been gifted yet another chance to prove that he still has an active career, as well as a storied history and tired lamentations of what might have been.

And yet he could not last a week. He could not last a week without embroiling himself in another pointless controversy, this time arrested in South Florida for allegedly destroying — and then stealing — a mobile phone.

These are the facts: on Monday afternoon, McGregor was arrested by the Miami Beach Police Department and charged with robbery and criminal mischief. According to the police arrest report, McGregor and a 22-year-old man were leaving a nightclub when they became involved in a dispute over a photograph.

“The victim attempted to take a picture of the defendant with his cell phone. The defendant slapped the victim's phone out of his hand, causing it to fall to the floor,” the report reads. “The defendant then stomped on the victim's phone several times, damaging it. The defendant then picked up the victim's phone and walked away with it, depriving him of it. The defendant was located and arrested.”

Additional information is, at this stage, thin on the ground. We do not know whether the man had asked McGregor’s permission or not to begin recording him or taking photographs. We do not know whether he was abusive or rude to McGregor. And we do not know for how long he persisted in attempting to interact with him.

But, even so, there are some fairly obvious questions that need to be asked of the athlete. The most basic being that, given we are told he is preparing for his comeback fight after last year’s dismal loss to Nurmagomedov, what exactly is he doing exiting a Miami nightclub bleary eyed in the early hours of the morning? Really, how often is there smoke without fire?

Rather remarkably it could have been even worse. If this incident had occurred just a week earlier, before he had finished completing his five days of community service at churches across Brooklyn, he would have been in violation of his probation. And that would have meant more than a slap on the wrist: there would have instead been a very serious fear of time behind bars and deportation.

In the wake of that shameful incident last year, a stony-faced Dana White memorably muttered in a cleaning cupboard that the attack was “the most disgusting thing that has ever happened in the history of this company,” promising dismal repercussions. But those never came. Instead, he merrily consented to using footage of the criminal act in various pre-fight promotion and something immediately became obvious: that McGregor was by now far, far too big to control.

That hasn't changed. And it all seems oddly fitting that McGregor’s latest controversy should come after a weekend of sporting violence and embarrassment, one that has prompted searching questions to be asked about our increasingly toxic public sphere. The real tragedy is perhaps that, once upon a time, McGregor was breathlessly proselytised as representing a new and confident Ireland. No more. The very thought seems sadly ridiculous.

Instead, McGregor is a troubled icon tailor-made for these troubled times, far more likely to make the news for despairing incidents such as these than his world-class skillset and showmanship. His is a stratospheric ego that grew first too big for his employers, then his sport and now the wider world around him. Perhaps he acted unnecessarily aggressively in Miami yesterday or perhaps he was baited into a reaction — the point is more that this kind of incident has become all too common in his career and the shock value has finally started to wear off.

Those famous victories in the UFC have never seemed so very long ago. And for a man who delighted in the extraordinary, now we all know exactly what to expect. Sadly, arrogance is a kingdom without a crown.