It is no secret that Conor McGregor absolutely detests Irish MMA star Paul Hughes! The latter, of course, fights in Bellator/PFL’s 155lbs division, where he recently slugged it out for the division strap last month against Usman Nurmagomedov. Initially, Hughes had wanted ‘Mystic Mac’ in his corner just as Khabib was to be in Usman’s corner.

However, after the Nikita Hand case was ruled against McGregor, Hughes publicly distanced himself from the former double champ—a move that left him disappointed in his former idol’s downfall. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t sit well with McGregor, who has since been taking shots at the young Irish star, questioning his loyalty and even his Irishness.

As expected, the Irishman didn’t hold back, relentlessly trashing the Bellator fighter online. But in recent days, the situation seemed to have cooled off—until McGregor reignited the feud with a now-deleted post on X.

When a fan asked him about Hughes, McGregor couldn’t resist a jab: “Use was born in Australia,” he responded, misspelling Hughes’ name—perhaps intentionally, given his well-documented pettiness. He then followed it up by posting a screenshot of Hughes’ Wikipedia page, highlighting the fact that the Bellator lightweight was indeed born in Sydney, Australia.

There is another dimension to McGregor questioning Hughes’ Irishness, which has the weight of the violent and tumultuous Irish history behind it. The Bellator star is from Northern Ireland, which is officially part of the United Kingdom and is different from McGregor’s Republic of Ireland, which is a sovereign country. “Get that flag off you. You little know what you are c–t from up there,” McGregor wrote in an old social media post. And most Irish fans see ‘The Notorious’ taking shots at the Bellator lightweight’s patriotism as crossing a line. In fact, not just fans but Hughes himself is extremely offended. And for good reason.

Why Conor McGregor questioning Paul Hughes’ Irishness is low even for him

“It was obviously a very extreme kind of viewpoint that he was taking. Obviously an unbelievably disrespectful one. It’s probably the most disrespectful thing you could say to a fellow Irishman is that he’s not Irish just because I come from the north of the country,” the remarkably respectful Hughes told ‘MMA Fighting’ in a recent interview.

For context, the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland were separated in the early twentieth century as two distinct polities by the British Empire, which used to rule over the entire island. While the former had a Catholic majority, the latter had a Protestant majority. This fault-line eventually led to decades of civil strife between the Irish Catholic and Protestant communities between the 1960’s and late 1990’s called ‘The Troubles’.

By questioning Hughes Irishness, ‘Mac’ is harkening back to that period of Irish history, and is the reason Hughes is so upset at it. You know how the Dagestani fighters like Khabib and Islam Makhachev get very offended being called Russians? Well, that is because they feel Dagestan has a distinct national identity, and the remote region was annexed to the Russian Empire in the nineteenth century and then in the Russian Republic after the fall of the USSR.

Well, Northern Ireland’s case is the opposite of that. They identify themselves as Irish, and any suggestion that they are not Irish because their country is part of the UK is extremely offensive to many of them. But then again, McGregor isn’t above using even the most offensive slurs to insult people. On the other hand, Hughes has dealt with ‘Mac’ like a gentleman. After all, if he did want to take shots at ‘The Notorious’, there is plenty of stuff he could point to- his civil sexual assault case, his alleged drug abuse, his joke of an MMA career to name just a few. What do you think about Conor McGregor taking yet another shot at Paul Hughes’ Irishness?