WATCH: Panellists on RTÉ’s Cutting Edge debate whether or not Conor McGregor is a “thug”

“Even to say that he’s put MMA on the map. Look, I’d be quite happy if I never heard of it. It’s appalling. I wouldn’t even call it a sport.”

A debate about whether or not Conor McGregor is a ‘thug’ took place on RTÉ’s Cutting Edge on Wednesday night in the wake of his arrest in New York last week. In case you’ve been living under a rock for the last six days, you’ll know that McGregor was arrested and charged with three counts of assault and one count of criminal mischief after he was filmed attacking a bus at a media event ahead of UFC 223 at the weekend. McGregor’s conduct has been the subject of much discussion in the days since and on RTÉ’s Cutting Edge on Wednesday night, two of the three panellists, Alison O’Connor and David Davin-Power, took a dim view of his actions, while the third, Vogue Williams, sought to defend the UFC star. After Davin-Power (who said that McGregor “represents all that’s wrong about society” on the show in the past) said that he hopes McGregor doesn’t come to “a sticky end” while suggesting that he was “out of control” during the incident last week, Williams said that while it was “a thuggish act”, it isn’t fair to call McGregor “a thug”. Williams described McGregor and his partner Dee Devlin as “really nice people” based on her experiences of meeting them in the past and referenced his charity work and the fact that he “put MMA on the map” in defence of ‘The Notorious’. https://twitter.com/CuttingEdgeRTE/status/984179167850676224 In response, Alison O’Connor suggested that you can’t “separate the thug from the thuggish behaviour” and went on to suggest that she wouldn’t want her kids visited by Conor McGregor if they were in Crumlin Hospital, saying that it’s “appalling” that he’s a male icon that young men would look up to. O’Connor didn’t disguise her contempt for MMA as a sport, saying: “Even to say that he’s put MMA on the map. Look, I’d be quite happy if I never heard of it. It’s appalling. I wouldn’t even call it a sport.” You can catch up on the episode of Cutting Edge in full on the RTÉ Player here.