The Black Forge Inn in the heart of Dublin’s Drimnagh neighbourhood has acquired a certain notoriety, for at least two reasons.
One is that some of the city’s most prominent gangland figures patronise the establishment, including members of the Kinahan syndicate.
The Kinahans, for anyone who is unaware of their reputation, are the Irish equivalent of the Italian mafia or the Mexican cartels. The crime drama Kin, now streaming on Netflix, is said to be loosely based on them.
The other reason? The Black Forge is owned by world-famous mixed martial arts fighter, and local legend, Conor McGregor.
Highlights of his greatest moments in the Octagon – the fenced-in, eight-sided mat on which his bouts are contested – play on a loop in the bar.
‘The Notorious’ is McGregor’s self-styled nickname and is displayed on the side of his £280,000 Rolls-Royce Ghost that is sometimes seen cruising the streets of Drimnagh and adjoining Crumlin, in the Dublin 12 postcode.
This is the area where the 36-year-old spent his formative years and why he chose to open a pub here, on the city’s Southside.
Dublin 12 is also the district synonymous with the Kinahans, who were once embroiled in a bloody turf war with a rival gang resulting in up to 20 murders and many more beatings, stabbings, shootings and bomb attacks.
McGregor knew some of the people doing the killing. He grew up with them.
Conor McGregor and Dee Devlin attend the Chopard ‘Gentleman’s Evening’ during the 75th annual Cannes film festival
Conor’s sister Aoife McGregor pictured with Graham ‘The Wig’ Whelan who she is dating
Conor McGregor pictured with believed Kinahan cartel member Nathan Foley
Ongoing gang violence was a disturbing subplot to the case at the high court in Dublin last week where Nikita Hand, 35, a former hairdresser, was found to have been raped by McGregor at a drink and cocaine-fuelled Christmas ‘after-party’ in 2018 and awarded damages of 248,600 euros (£206,000), with the legal costs expected to top £1million.
McGregor had denied the accusation, claiming the sex was fully consensual. Ms Hand also lived in Drimnagh, until recently at least. Men in balaclavas broke into her house, smashed the windows, and stabbed her boyfriend after she brought the civil claim for sexual assault against the father-of-four.
The incident was referred to in legal discussions in the absence of the jury and reported only after the case ended.
Let’s be clear, there is nothing to suggest McGregor had anything to do with the home invasion – a point reiterated by Ms Hand’s counsel – but this is what he did say nonetheless: ‘We do make the claim that it was not an untargeted attack, [it] rose from supporters of the defendant [McGregor].’
Ms Hand, fearing for her safety, has now moved out of the Drimnagh area. A second woman, also from Drimnagh, had a brick thrown through her window and her car torched last year after she too filed a civil claim against McGregor which has now been dropped.
Samantha Murphy, 40, had claimed she was beaten up on his yacht anchored off the Spanish island of Formentera, leaving her with a broken arm, and was forced to jump into the sea to escape him.
McGregor – who is engaged to his long-term partner Dee Devlin – denied all the accusations.
There has never been any evidence he is, or ever has been, involved in organised crime but Conor McGregor moves in some of the same circles as those who are and makes no secret of it.
This has enhanced his ‘notorious’ credentials and helped him amass an estimated personal fortune in excess of £160million from prize money in America’s Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), along with all his endorsements, sponsorship deals and his own business interests outside the ‘cage’.
The Black Forge Inn is a lounge and bar owned by Conor McGregor in Drimnagh, Dublin 12.
Conor McGregor prepares to fight Dustin Poirier in their lightweight bout during UFC 264 at T-Mobile Arena on July 10, 2021, in Las Vegas
Conor McGregor pictured with his sister Aoife in a pub
In the past, McGregor’s trash-talking led to comparisons with Muhammad Ali, whom he cites as one of his early inspirations. But a more accurate, less flattering analogy, in the circumstances, is Mike Tyson, the former world heavyweight champion who was jailed for raping a beauty queen in 1992.
After the jury in the high court ruled against him last week, the commercial backlash was swift.
Already, supermarkets and off-licences have removed McGregor’s beer and whiskey brands from shelves and his voice will no longer be used in the popular video game Hitman.
Another upshot is that his gangland connections – especially his links with the Kinahans – have been thrust firmly into the limelight.
The Black Forge – which, unlike other pubs in the vicinity, has a near constant security presence on its doors following a firebomb attack in 2022 – is the backdrop to much of the wider narrative concerning McGregor.
‘The Black Forge has always been a place of interest to us,’ a Gardai source told us. ‘This is not because of who owns it but more because of the people who have gone there and continue to go there.’
A familiar face is convicted drug dealer and money launderer Graham ‘The Wig’ Whelan, whose ties with the Kinahans go back many years.
He is now in a relationship with McGregor’s sister Aoife. The two are pictured on Instagram sitting on a couch at the Black Forge with a glass of whiskey on a table in front of them; she has one arm draped over his shoulder and another resting on his leg.
Whelan, 42, who has played for the pub’s football team, was a top-table guest at the wedding of McGregor’s other sister Erin in County Tipperary in August.
Gangsters the world over have always been attracted to the macho glamour of the fight game – the subject of countless movies down the years – but McGregor’s connection with this world was forged during his childhood at the Crumlin Boxing Club.
‘A few of the kids who were here at the same time would be dead now,’ said Phil Sutcliffe, McGregor’s old coach.
Conor McGregor leaves the High Court in Dublin after the personal injury case against him
Nikita Hand, who is also known as Nikita Ni Laimhin, speaking to the media outside the High Court in Dublin after the personal injury case against Conor McGregor
Nikita Hand (centre) leaves the High Court in Dublin on November 22
‘Some of them got shot. Conor would have known those lads, trained with them aged 11 or 12. But he went one way and they went another.’
Among them was Paul Kavanagh, a debt collector for the Kinahans and a father of two young girls, who was gunned down in his car in the suburbs of Dublin in 2015. He was one of casualties slain in the infamous gangland war involving the Kinahans.
Conor McGregor attended his funeral.
The same year, prominent figures in the Irish underworld flew to Las Vegas to watch McGregor in action in the Octagon.
It was far from uncommon on such trips for some members of his travelling support to be banned from entering the US by Homeland Security because of their criminal records.
On the plane during this particular jaunt was David Byrne, also a contemporary of ‘The Notorious’ at the Crumlin Boxing Club.
Not long after returning to Ireland from Sin City, the 34-year-old was shot dead at the Regency Hotel in Dublin.
How embedded was Byrne’s family in the Kinahan cartel, which controls much of the world’s cocaine imports into Europe? Answer: Very.
His brother Liam, recently jailed for five years on weapons charges, was the Kinahan’s de facto Dublin boss after patriarch Christy, 67, and his sons Daniel, 47, and Christopher Jr, 43, relocated to Dubai in 2016 to insulate themselves from the escalating violence at home.
The Byrne mob’s importance to the Kinahans was laid bare in the high court in 2018 following an investigation by the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB), the Irish law enforcement agency.
‘The family are synonymous with organised crime in Dublin… and is aligned to the Kinahan Organised Crime Group (OCG),’ the court was told in submissions.
Assets worth 1.4million euros (£1.1million) linked to their operation were seized during a raid at Liam Byrne’s house in Crumlin, which had six bedrooms with en-suite jacuzzis, a cinema, swimming pool and a garden hot tub.
The haul bagged up by CAB officers included Rolex and Breitling watches and wads of cash totalling more than 26,000 euros (£21,000). Conor McGregor has featured on the social media pages of Liam Byrne’s car salesman son Lee, who is in his early 20s.
Yet, despite these links, rumours spread to America at around the time of the CAB investigation that a bounty had been put on McGregor’s head by the Kinahans for punching a man with connections to them. It was not true. But it prompted Floyd Mayweather Jr, the American boxing legend who had defeated McGregor in a famous crossover fight, to taunt him in a tweet: ‘I already f***** you up in 2017 now they about to f*** you up in 2018.
‘You’re about to start your new year off with a bang.’ McGregor’s reply was intriguing: ‘I am the cartel,’ he said before uploading a video of himself in a hoodie on Instagram.
It was not the first time McGregor had played at being a gangster.
Conor McGregor and Dee Devlin arrive back at the High Court in Dublin on November 22
Earlier, in a separate, more serious incident, he posted pictures of himself wearing a balaclava pointing a suspected firearm out of a car window in Crumlin. Gardai called at McGregor’s County Kildare mansion – outside Dublin on the grounds of The K Club, famous for hosting the Ryder Cup in 2006 – and confiscated two ‘weapons’.
They turned out to be airsoft guns, used in action role-playing games, and he faced no charges.
That’s not to say McGregor’s slate is entirely clean, however – he does have a string of convictions for road traffic offences.
He has a fleet of vehicles: a Lamborghini, Rolls-Royce, Range Rover, Cadillac, BMW and Mercedes Coupe, but is currently banned from driving after narrowly avoiding jail in July for an ‘appalling’ episode when he sped along a bus lane, jumped a red light and nearly crashed into another car.
Back at the Black Forge, regulars said McGregor was sometimes at the bar during the 11 days of the high court case.
A video showing him posing with a number of young men at the pub resurfaced and went viral shortly after the jury found in favour of Nikita Hand, after deliberating for a day. One of the men has been identified in Irish newspapers as Nathan Foley, who was described as a Kinahan cartel ‘foot soldier’.
The 26-year-old was jailed for six years in 2016 for his part in the gunning down of a drug dealer who was wrongly blamed for an earlier failed shooting.
Foley drove one of the cars involved in the ‘hit’ and attended a debrief with the gunman in the hours after he was killed.
Meanwhile over in Dubai, the Kinahans – ‘Dapper Don’ Christy and his sons Daniel and Christopher – live in luxury. They’ve been there for the past seven years, despite being among the world’s most wanted men.
In 2022, the US government put up a $5million (£3.8million) reward for information leading to their arrest or conviction and unveiled Russia-style sanctions against the organisation.
‘Today, the Kinahans join the ranks of the Camorra [Italian mafia organisation] and Japan’s Yakuza [Japanese mafia organisation],’ the US Treasury declared when the measures were announced. The Camorra and Yakuza have also been targeted by the US authorities.
The ruling elite in Dubai, however, have a history of sheltering fugitive crime bosses. For the moment, the Kinahans remain untouchable.
But what next for Conor McGregor?
Fiancée Dee Devlin, his partner of 15 years and the mother of his children, is steadfastly standing by him. ‘I love him I trust him and I BELIEVE him,’ she said on Instagram.
Perhaps she would do well to remember that old saying: ‘You can judge a person by the company they keep.’
Additional reporting: Tim Stewart
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