Conor McGregor was sitting cageside at the Total Extreme Fighting event for Joao Carvalho’s last fight.
McGregor was cheering on his teammate Charlie Ward, Carvalho’s opponent, and much like everyone else inside the National Stadium that night, he could not have foreseen that the 28-year-old Portuguese fighter would be pronounced dead in hospital a few days after the fight.
The crowd cheered as Joao Carvalho walked out of the cage, nobody thought it would be the last time he'd ever fight https://t.co/Zz3M5sZzPK
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) April 13, 2016
McGregor was expected to travel to the UFC 200 press conference in Las Vegas the week following Total Extreme Fighting’s inaugural event, but then it emerged that he wouldn’t be attending, nor would he be fighting on the landmark event for refusing to take part in the media obligations.
Speaking to ESPN, McGregor admitted that the extreme media reaction to Carvalho’s death played a role in his decision to shy away from the spotlight.
“I had fucking journalists knocking down my mother’s door, you know what I mean? That’s not what I signed up to do – have people knocking on my mother’s door, talking about a kid dying. It’s not nice to see a kid die like that. It does something to you.”
“And there’s been show after show canceled in Ireland since that. It’s fucked up to be a part of it, and I didn’t want to bring it back up and put it more on a public scale.”
Ariel Helwani believes Joao Carvalho's death may have been a factor in Conor McGregor's retirement tweet https://t.co/TPKESYAwPl
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) April 20, 2016
Understandably, McGregor just didn’t feel up to doing his usual antics for the cameras after witnessing such a tragic event unfold.
“After all that, I did not want to be put in front of a camera and made to dance. I just wasn’t feeling it.”
