When Conor McGregor launched an attack on a bus filled with UFC fighters to get to Chabib Nurmagomedov, several athletes were affected by his actions.
Michael Chiesa suffered a head cut from broken glass due to a broken window on the bus and was withdrawn from a scheduled fight against Anthony Pettis. Ray Borg, a flyweight contender, dropped out of Brandon Moreno after seeing broken glass.
Rose Namajunas was only days away from defending the title against Joanna Jedrzejczyk and while she was not physically injured during the attack, the mental trauma definitely took its toll.
The former UFC strawweight champion has rarely spoken about the McGregor incident, but she has only recently shared her experience during the attack on the bus that rocked her.
“It was like forever on that bus because I had no idea who attacked us,” Namajunas said in a year of the fighter on the UFC Fight Pass. “All of a sudden I see a big bang on my window and then I see one of the security guards grab one of the guys.
“I didn’t know until a little later that it was Conor. When he threw the dolly, the bus went into the elevator when he threw it to the window right in front of me. But if the bus hadn’t driven it would have hit my window. “
According to Namajunas, she was relieved to discover that the attack was orchestrated by McGregor and that it was not just a random act of violence. However, the trauma she suffered as a result was still very real as she looked back on similar incidents that plagued her upbringing.
“When I found out in my head that it was Conor, I was a little relieved, but I was still nervous,” said Namajunas. “It just brought me back when I was a kid when I was riding a bus through poor neighborhoods to school and people threw on our bus. And I’ve never been cornered like this before. We just sat there and were out of control. What did I do in that moment? I said the Lord’s Prayer again and then I felt a little better in that moment and it got me through this difficult moment.
“And everything that came from my childhood is what I fought for and it’s like going back to the stupid street where I don’t want to be around anymore. I fought my way out of that. So here I am in the same place again, but at the same time I came back as if I were here too. That’s why I took it as a motivation to show the world that this won’t stop me. “
Despite the pre-bout impact of the incident on them, Namajunas still chose to compete in UFC 223, but that didn’t come without its own challenges.
“Arriving at the arena itself was difficult,” said Namajunas. “Very difficult. Because I was very stressed from the incident on the bus and came back to the same arena with the same elevator and then the noise of the bus led me back to two days before. I was super shocked by it. Super tense.
“I was so tense when Trevor was [Wittman] I tied my hands tight, I squeezed my fist super tight. I turn my hand over and my hand was bleeding. I was like a guy, I need to relax. I have to breathe or something. “
Namajunas said she was still incredibly tense during her strike, but it eventually eased when the fight started. In the end she made a unanimous decision over Jedrzejzyk in the co-main event.
As for McGregor, he is ultimately not advocating that his role in the bus attack be disordered while at the same time doing community service and repaying the damage caused in hand-to-hand combat.
