THE last place you’d expect Conor McGregor to be a villain is Ireland, but that’s the craic — at least among newspaper columnists.

As he faces potential sanctions for his role in the violent aftermath to his fight against Khabib Nurmagomedov at UFC 229, McGregor isn’t exactly being defended by his home press.

A host of newspapers carried headlines as brutal as the assault McGregor suffered from Nurmagomedov before tapping in the fourth round — and from three Russian attackers post-fight.

The most colourful criticism came from The Independent’s Eamonn Sweeney who said “that mangy bear Khabib wrestled when he was a kid was probably a harder opponent” than the Irish star.

“He’s no elite sportsman and now he has got his comeuppance. He was humiliated,” Sweeney wrote.

“McGregor has had five fights in the last three years and lost three of them convincingly. That makes the national fuss look a bit silly at this stage.”

Sweeney also had some choice words for the UFC itself. “Watching the build-up to the main event, it doesn’t take long to twig that this is essentially a sport aimed at dumbasses,” he wrote. “Fair enough, the stupid need entertainment too, but there’s not much in it for the rest of us. MMA is a sporting version of Love Island. With even tighter shorts. Just ridiculous ... MMA is such a small world, you could call it the Mickey Mouse Association.”

Conor McGregor was slammed by the Irish media. Source: Supplied

The Irish Daily Mail’s Shane McGrath declared the “rush to acclaim (McGregor) as an Irish sporting great was daft” before slamming his role in creating the climate that led to the storm that followed the fight.

“Such scenes. Such outrage. Such scandal. Such sickening sanctimony,” McGrath wrote. “Many loud in sharing their abhorrence at the pitiful aftermath of Conor McGregor’s defeat spent years indulging and excusing the wretched behaviour of their hero, and insisting the sport and the organisation that made him rich and famous and vulgar, deserved to be treated with the seriousness accorded to more established purists. They were wrong then and they should be ignored now.”

“McGregor has been absolutely central in the charge towards the low point the UFC has now reached,” he added.

A page from the Irish Daily Mail. Source: Supplied

The Irish Times’ Philip O’Connor argued the violent aftermath to the fight obscured “how McGregor fell “far short of his own lofty pronouncements” and his return “bore little resemblance to that of the king he proclaimed to be”.

“What is striking is that there were no surprises in what the Russian tried to do, and yet McGregor, returning to mixed martial arts after a 23-month hiatus, seemed incapable of stopping it,” O’Connor wrote.

“He needs to forget the myth he has built around himself and concentrate solely on his next fight. Anything else is a gamble he can’t afford to take.”

The Irish Daily Star labelled the fight a sham. Source: Supplied

The Irish reaction didn’t sit well with many McGregor fans or other members of the MMA media, including leading reporter Ariel Helwani.

“What a shocker they all poured it on Conor,” Helwani tweeted. “Never seen a home country’s media corps (for the most part) so reluctantly cover a star before.”