Conor McGregor is headed back to court over a Sky News reporter calling him a rapist.
In November 2024, McGregor was found civilly liable by an Irish jury for the 2018 assault of Nikita Hand in a Dublin
hotel. As he exited the courthouse to a scrum of press, a Sky News reporter said “Mr. McGregor, you are a rapist. Have you any reaction or apology to the woman at the center of this?”
On Thursday (Nov. 20th, 2025), McGregor’s Irish lawyers were granted the right to serve Sky News in the UK with a lawsuit accusing the outlet of defamation. Why now, considering it’s been almost a year since the incident? There’s a one year statute of limitations to file this sort of lawsuit, and McGregor’s lawyers got their case in just two days before time ran out.
The root of McGregor’s lawsuit against Sky Sports comes down to the civil charge McGregor was found guilty of: assault, not rape.
“The civil tort of assault … that was what the jury was asked to consider,” NewsTalk reporter Frank Greaney said following the guilty verdict in 2024. “But clearly, through the evidence, and the judge said this to the jury: the essence of the allegation was of a sexual nature. It was an allegation of of rape.”
McGregor’s lawyers appealed the guilty verdict, with one argument being that the jury may have been confused as to whether they were determining McGregor assaulted Hand or raped her. A court of appeals rejected that logic and his appeal, stating there “could be no doubt on the part of any member of the jury that the question they were answering … was whether or not Mr. McGregor assaulted Ms. Hand by raping her.”
McGregor appealed again and is awaiting a decision from the Irish Supreme Court as to whether they’ll hear his case. In the meantime, his lawyers are now in the process of suing Sky Sports for calling him a rapist when, according to his lawyers, news outlets should only ever say he was found civilly liable for assault.
