David Davin-Power was speaking on RTÉ’s Cutting Edge programme on Wednesday night.
Former RTÉ political correspondent David Davin-Power has described Irish UFC star Conor McGregor as “a bully” and said that “he represents all that’s wrong about society post the crash”.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Cutting Edge programme on Wednesday night, Davin-Power, who left RTÉ earlier this year after a long career with the state broadcaster, said of McGregor: “I think he’s a bully and I think he represents all that’s wrong about society post the crash.”
“He’s kind of a love/hate icon, if you know what I mean,” he added.
“I think he represents all the polarisation and all the coarseness and all the bile that has infused society via social media and the rest of it over the last ten years.
“When you think of what he’s gotten away with it in terms of misogyny and homophobia and all the rest of it, anybody, you (host Brendan O’Connor) or I, would be pilloried, we’d be out of a job if we said half the things he did.”
'I think he's a bully' David Davin Power gives his thoughts on Conor McGregor & our panel are very divided on it. #CuttingEdge is live now pic.twitter.com/GbTxRbTNf8
— Cutting Edge (@CuttingEdgeRTE) November 15, 2017
Davin Power’s comments come after McGregor apologised for entering the Octagon, confronting the referee and slapping an official at a Bellator event in Dublin on Friday night.
Only a few weeks’ ago, meanwhile, McGregor apologised on The Late Late Show after he was heard using the term “faggot” in conversation with training partner Artem Lobov after Lobov was defeated by Andre Fili at UFC Gdansk.
When O’Connor interjected to state that McGregor had apologised for his actions and comments of late, Davin-Power replied: “He did, but the apology was mealy-mouthed, I mean, there was dog-whistling going on there, that’s the kind of language that his fans understand.
“I just think… it’s a shame that when society is getting back on his feet that he’s the kind of role model that’s put forward internationally because make no mistake about it, he is a huge, huge seller for this country.”
Davin-Power’s fellow panellists, Aisling O’Loughlin and Jennifer O’Connell, had alternative points of view.
“People love the fact that he’s come from rags to riches, that story is always going to resonate with people,” O’Loughlin said.
“All that he’s achieved, even if it is violence and even if you don’t agree with it, he has achieved a lot and when you step back from it, you kind of have to tip your hat to him,” she added.
Jennifer O’Connell, meanwhile, said that McGregor should be given credit for identifying an appetite for a new Irish story in America, even though she feels that it is all an act.
“He’s been brilliant at identifying that there was an appetite in America for a new Irish story that was not about the rolling Emerald hills and Tom Cruise in Far and Away and the shamrocks and the shillelaghs and that there was an appetite for another equally fake version of Ireland, which is what he perpetuates,” O’Connell said.
Asked what exactly that fake version of Ireland is, O’Connell responded: “The projects, ‘I grew up in the projects and I’m rough and I’m crazy and I’m out there’.
“I don’t think anything he does is authentic, I think that whole thing was completely contrived, I think everything he does is carefully thought out and I think in that sense I think you have to give him a little bit of credit for being clever.”
You can catch up on Cutting Edge, the last episode in the current series, on the RTÉ Player.
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