UFC's Conor McGregor Teases Chelsea Fans With Claim He Wants To "Explore" Buying The Club
MMA fighter Conor McGregor has declared himself interested in buying Chelsea Football Club.
The five-time Premier League champions are on the market after Russian owner Roman Abramovich released a statement on Wednesday saying he had "taken the decision to sell" the club he bought back in 2003.
Abramovich is understood to be seeking a fairly quick sale as he is one of a number of Russian oligarchs at risk of potential sanctions by the UK government.
It has been alleged that Abramovich has links to Vladimir Putin, who ordered Russia to invade Ukraine last week.
Abramovich has denied having links to Putin and vowed in Wednesday's statement to pledge "all net proceeds" from the sale of Chelsea to a new charitable foundation to help "all victims of the war in Ukraine".
Shortly after Abramovich's statement was published, McGregor responded on Twitter.
The UFC star posted a screenshot of a WhatsApp conversation in which he had sent some messages reading: "Chelsea for sale £3bn. Let's buy it".
He captioned the screenshot with the words: "I wish to explore this. @ChelseaFC".
It is highly unlikely that anyone at Chelsea, let alone Abramovich himself, will take McGregor's declaration seriously.
The sales of football clubs are famously done behind closed doors, certainly not on Twitter.
Furthermore, although McGregor was the highest-earning athlete of 2021 as per Forbes, he does not have anywhere near £3 billion to spend on a Premier League football club.
Conor McGregor unconvincingly claimed on Wednesday that he wanted to buy Chelsea FC
IMAGO/INPHO/Tom Hogan
He could of course buy the club as part of a consortium, but that too seems unrealistic.
Just in case anyone was close to being fooled by McGregor's declaration, the Manchester United fan followed up his original tweet with an even less serious post.
The 33-year-old uploaded footage of himself in a video game where he appeared to be playing the role of Chelsea's manager.
He again tagged Chelsea in the post, which was captioned: "Push it to the limit!"