Conor McGregor has taken aim at UFC rival Matt Brown after the welterweight branded him "coked up", branding the fighter a "heroin addict" in a series of tweets.
In a recent interview on the Believe You Me podcast with Michael Bisping and Anthony Smith, both of whom have had their issues with the Irishman, Brown claimed that he was finished at the top level and had become "a bum". The fighter then claimed that his rival was using cocaine, and regularly drunk.
Brown has had his own issues with drugs in the past, openly discussing his issues with meth addiction, cocaine and even surviving a heroin overdose in his early years. And in response to his appearance on Bisping's show, McGregor mocked Brown for his history with two tweets about the fighter.
He first simply tweeted "Matt Brown, heroin addict", before later sharing a video of Brown being viciously knocked out by a head-kick from Donald Cerrone with the caption "Ya’ll wanna see a dead body?" The video tweet remains at the time of writing, but his heroin jibe was quickly added to his list of hastily-deleted tweets.
It wouldn't be the first time that McGregor has used a loss to Cerrone as leverage in an argument with a fighter, having brutally knocked out 'Cowboy' within seconds of their 2020 meeting. Earlier this month McGregor had a face-off with Mike Perry after a bare-knuckle boxing event, during which he invoked the memory of his loss to Cerrone by first round submission in 2018.
Brown hit back at McGregor, tweeting: "This guy woke up, did a bump, and started tweeting. I love it. I don’t know how to post gifs and s*** wouldn’t be hard to find one of him getting his face smashed lol." He replied to the deleted message by accusing McGregor again of taking drugs, saying that he was a 'former user' and that his rival is a "current coke addict", before adding "let’s go!"
McGregor was responding to an interview in which Brown said: “He’s a nobody, in my opinion. He was amazing, I give him props for all that he did, but at this point he’s a bum... You can headline that, and it won’t be bulls***. Conor, I think he’s lost like four or his last five.
"He hasn’t f***ing done nothing. Everything you see, it’s him drinking and getting coked up, or he’s juiced out of his mind. That’s f***ing bum life to me. All that money don’t make you not a bum. You’re still a bum to me, bro. When you step in the cage, you’re still a bum to me.”
Brown has previously spoken of his battles with addiction, even coming up with his ring name 'The Immortal' after surviving an overdose. He went on to audition for season seven of The Ultimate Fighter, the same show where McGregor will coach on season 31 this year, and ended up in the UFC.
McGregor is currently preparing for his own octagon comeback after two years of inactivity at the end of the year against Michael Chandler. Meanwhile, Brown made his return to action earlier this month after over a year out of the cage when he knocked out Court McGee in Charlotte, North Carolina.
