Rose Namajunas received an apology from Conor McGregor for his infamous "bus attack" during UFC 223 media day in Brooklyn this past spring, but she said it wasn't up to scratch.
On April 5, McGregor hurled a dolly through the window of a bus transporting fighters following the media day event in an attempt to get to Khabib Nurmagomedov, who was on the bus. Namajunas (8-3), the UFC strawweight champion who successfully defended her title against Joanna Jedrzejczyk two days later, was also on the bus and said she was traumatized by the attack.
A few months removed from the incident, Namajunas spoke about McGregor's efforts to reach out to her privately during Monday's episode of Ariel Helwani's MMA Show podcast.
"I did get an Instagram message from him, but I don't really know if that was really him," Namajunas told Helwani. "To me, that doesn't seem like the type of, it just didn't seem like a sincere apology from an actual person. To me, I didn't really, I guess, consider it a real apology."
While Namajunas confirmed the message did include an apology, it was not well received.
"It said, 'I'm sorry for what happened,' and then it was like, but then he immediately went on to like justifying what he did and stuff like that and the reasons why he did it," Namajunas explained. "That to me was like, it really doesn't matter. I don't care what beef he's got with who. That's none of my business, I don't need to know that information. Do you know what I mean? That doesn't do anything for me. So there was an apology and I'm a pretty cool person and I always accept apologies, but to me, I'm like a personal person, I like face to face. That's how I like to handle things. I feel like anything can be worked out, you just gotta talk through it as adults."
Her response to McGregor's message was short and to the point.
"Yeah, I said 'f--- that,'" Namajunas said. "I said call Pat [Barry]. I just put Pat's phone number and said, 'f--- that' to whatever your message is and call him."
So did McGregor call? "No," Namajunas said, and then Barry chimed in.
"That didn't come from Conor," Barry said. "That apology didn't come from him."
When asked if she was over the incident, Namajunas told Helwani, "No, man. When we got back home, we stayed upstairs, locked in our room because we were just paranoid about how crazy the week was. It was really tough. I'm still trying not to leave the house too much or there will be times when I'm just like, 'Yeah we should just go home,' like I just have a weird feeling. I live in a very nice neighborhood, there's nothing that really goes on around here. So, for me to be like sketch. ... I'm still paranoid about everything. I have a therapist that I go see."