It was a Christmas weekend in Dublin, and joy was unconfined for Conor McGregor.
Joy.
It’s the word the mixed martial arts fighter returns to again and again while fondly remembering his bedroom encounter with a hairdresser in the penthouse suite of a four-star Dublin hotel one Sunday afternoon in December of 2018.
He smiles and speaks softly when describing the relaxed mood of his joyous night out which turned into a day, always stressing the “happiness” and the “excitement” of this “fun” party occasion which began in various city nightspots and ended with “athletic” sex between him and Nikita Hand.
Joy is a word Conor McGregor returns to again and again. Nikita Hand paints a much darker picture
Blindboy: ‘I left my first day of school feeling great shame. The pain of that still rises up in me’
Not quite back to basics for Ireland but amazing 1950s throwback goal lightens the mood
Election 2024 poll: Support for Independents jumps but Fine Gael remains most popular party
On his second day in the witness box on Thursday, he remembers the mood and emotion “as clear as day” in sharp detail, as he lists off his comprehensive recollection of the multiple sexual positions they enjoyed and the different parts of her body he held during their two bouts of “prolonged” sex punctuated by one long pause for sleep.
He says she begged him to continue. But he couldn’t. It had been an enjoyable and happy occasion.
Nikita Hand paints a much darker picture.
She says he raped her so hard her tampon lodged at the very top of her vagina and had to be removed by forceps when she went to the Rotunda Hospital the day after.
It never happened, the Ultimate Fighting Championship star told the court on Thursday.
“It was broad daylight. There was no tampon.”
The former hair colourist is now suing McGregor and his friend James Lawrence for civil damages. Both men deny her claim of alleged assault.
The multimillionaire fighter said on Thursday that he was “beyond petrified” when initially faced with the allegation and questioned by gardaí.
Court 24 at the High Court was full again on Thursday for his evidence. McGregor appeared more subdued than the previous day. At times his voice was barely audible. The little jabbing movements with his arm to underline points were missing too.
But it didn’t matter. The Dub who enters the octagon as The Notorious was a big draw, and his every word was received in absolute silence by the packed gallery above and the many journalists and members of the public squeezed together below.
It was a silence compounded by some riveting testimony.
How to account for the bruising and impacted tampon? McGregor said Ms Hand had been at multiple Christmas parties over the weekend period. Quietly and slowly, he told her lawyer: “Your client had sex with multiple people during the course of that three-day bender”.
He was one of them and his friend was the other, he said.
So was James Lawrence the “patsy” who would take the rap for him?
“How silly,” came the response. McGregor denied the suggestion that Lawrence had been used as a fall guy.
Nikita Hand and her partner, who has been by her side throughout, listened to him with heads bowed. Along with the crumpled tissues, she held a stress ball in her hand.
When John Gordon SC, for Ms Hand, told the fighter, “in simple language”, that his DNA had been found in precisely the same location as the tampon, she looked up. McGregor shook his head slightly and exhaled. His lawyer Remy Farrell objected. McGregor repeated that there was no tampon.
The penthouse suite was booked in the early hours of the morning when the sports star was partying in Krystle nightclub with two women. But they went home – he left one of them to Clontarf in his car.
He then went back to the southside where he met Nikita Hand and her colleague Danielle Kealey, but not because he wanted them as “replacements” for the other two.
It was 10 in the morning and they had been partying all night. They were driven to Drimnagh, where McGregor asked his friend to join them, telling him “there were two nice ladies out here who were asking for him”.
He books hotels regularly as “a place of rest”. He likes to go home fresh after nights out and before “going back to normal life”, which is why he decided against being driven home to his house in Kildare.
Sometimes at the hotels there could be parties and sex if he was “lucky enough”.
Ms Hand told gardaí she was very drunk and frightened in the hotel.
“I think we can safely ascertain from every shred of viable, unbiased evidence that there was no sign of distress,” declared McGregor. “A good night was had and that’s clear as day from start to finish.”
Joy to the world.
Until the solicitors were consulted and the guards commenced their interviews.
And it all ended up in a small, joyless courtroom on Chancery Street.
- Sign up for push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
- Join The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
- Listen to our Inside Politics podcast for the best political chat and analysis