People Are Taking The Piss Out Of This Article On McGregor’s Dublin Upbringing

James Fenton

You know Crumlin has made it on to the world stage when it’s featured the headline of an ESPN article.

The summer of 2017 has been dominated by talk of Conor McGregor’s August 26 boxing match against Floyd Mayweather and given that ESPN is one of the world’s leading sports publications it’s natural that they’ll have a lot to say.

However, a piece published by their acclaimed sportswriter Wright Thompson has gained a lot of negative attention on this of the Atlantic.

The article aims to provide some background on McGregor’s rise to international superstardom but the way Thompson has depicted Dublin, and more specifically Crumlin and Drimnagh, has left a lot of people on these shores a bit bemused.

Thompson begins…

“Just before Christmas, the drug dealers hanging on a north Dublin corner saw Conor McGregor’s white BMW turn down their dead-end road.”

He then goes on to say…

“The Hutch family ran this part of the north side, while the Kinahans operated mainly in the neighborhoods south of the river dividing the town.

“A woman is telling me this story, standing in the corner store on a street that a local crime writer calls the Hutch family’s “Alamo.”

“He’s from the south side,” she explains. “He’s not from this side.”

Now we’re not saying Dublin doesn’t have a gangland problem but to suggest that Conor was in some way brave to be driving around the north inner city is slightly overstating things. Other highlights include:

“Dublin is best understood by exploring its many divisions, its unending physical and mental boundaries. The city, and its current champion, McGregor, are defined by those limits. It’s a clannish, parochial place. Crossing the wrong street has traditionally been reason enough for an ass-whipping. Men have had to drop dates off at bus stops instead of walking them all the way home.”

“The tabloids read like a Dennis Lehane novel, day after day, a man shot in his bed, another stabbed in the heart with a kitchen knife, another smuggling in a rocket launcher into Dublin.”

Since the article appeared online it hasn’t gone down too well…

The Dublin I inhabit and the Dublin ESPN thinks Conor McGregor inhabits are vastly different places. pic.twitter.com/3r84fZ1yQS

— Peter Kavanagh (@TheKavOfficial) August 7, 2017

Just because it’s Wright Thompson doesn’t mean we’ve to fawn. This is about Dublin after all… pic.twitter.com/duBO5Jw9aP

— Ewan MacKenna (@EwanMacKenna) August 7, 2017

What sort of crap is this? https://t.co/W16iWENS4N

— Matt Cooper (@cooper_m) August 7, 2017

Usually a big fan of Wright Thompson’s stuff & there’s plenty to admire in his McGregor piece but this isn’t a fair representation of Dublin pic.twitter.com/XCR5vEDKx2

— Gerard Farrell (@gerrytastic) August 7, 2017

You can read the full article here. Let us know what you think of it.