Conor McGregor and Andre Fili had vastly different weekends.
While Conor McGregor’s reputation took a huge hit for his antics in Gdansk, Andre Fili garnered a lot of respect for how he carried himself.
Fili had a superb performance on the preliminary card, comprehensively beating Artem Lobov to a unanimous decision in a fight that was briefly stopped so that referee could cease McGregor’s yammering from the crowd. He taunted McGregor throughout the bout but immediately tried to end the beef in his Octagon interview with Dan Hardy.
“Yeah, it’s emotionally charged because I’ve got Conor McGregor over here in a $10,000 suit doing his thing. Say whatever you want, but my coach, my mentor Urijah (Faber) always tells me, ‘a high tide raises all ships.’ I ain’t a hater. I got nothing but respect for everybody in this whole room.”
This is not a good look for Conor McGregor https://t.co/vvAQt57z1O
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) October 23, 2017
When he was quizzed about the fight itself, Fili politely declined in order to talk about something of more importance.
“This whole two months I’ve been in this fight camp, all I saw on the news was mass shootings and bombings and tsunamis and hurricanes and there’s forest fires up and down California. You guys, we’ve got to start treating each other like human beings. We’ve got to show each other a little love. There’s only one race, it’s the human race. We’ve got to start giving a shit about each other and this planet that we inherited and our kids and our grandkids are going to inherit.”
This wonderful message of humanity was sadly lost on ‘The Notorious,’ who proceeded to drop the six-letter f-word multiple times as he escorted his SBG training partner backstage. The clip was sent out on the BT Sport and UFC Twitter accounts, but was swiftly deleted.
https://twitter.com/fuufnf/status/921823200031453185
Fili didn’t take too kindly to McGregor’s multiple uses of the homophobic slur. He saw it as a form of weakness and a sign of insecurity, as he explained to MMA Fighting.
“There’s no need to use words like that. You don’t need to demean other people to make yourself seem bigger. Whenever you hear someone use that word or call someone a ‘bitch,’ that makes you look so insecure.”
He revealed that McGregor approached him shortly after dropping the insult, shook his hand and paid his respects. In hindsight, Fili believes this to be a fake gesture.
“Don’t be fake with me. I’m as real a person as you’re going to meet. You’re always going to know where you stand with me. For him to say what he said and then turn right around and act like we’re cool, that’s so fake.”
At the time of writing, there had been no statement from McGregor, his team or the UFC regarding his comments backstage in Gdansk.
