Fans furious as US presenter Laura Sanko claims Conor McGregor is British

UFC fighter turned analyst Laura Sanko was appearing on a weigh-in show where she listed her Top 5 active UK fighters.

Tom Aspinall took first place, followed by McGregor, while Leon Edwards, Arnold Allen, and Paddy Pimblett also made the cut.

However, her co-hosts were quick to question her for including Irishman McGregor in her list.

“I don’t want to get too geopolitical, but is Ireland in the UK?” one of her co-anchors asks.

“Yes, it is!” she responds, while another points out that only Northern Ireland is included in the UK.

Later, Daniel Cormier hit out at Laura once again, asking: “Why was Conor on the list? He's not from the UK.”

Laura replies: “Yes, he is!”

“He’s not from the UK, Laura,” a frustrated Daniel stresses.

“Do you not understand that the United Kingdom is the United Kingdom of Britain...” Laura says before admitting that she was wrong and Cormier was right.

The awkward moment is being widely criticised on social media, although many UFC fans have admitted that they also thought Ireland belonged to the UK as “the accents are similar”.

“The number of Americans that don’t know the difference between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland is ridiculous,” one person wrote.

Another explained: “The Republic of Ireland is not the UK. McGregor is from ROI. Northern Ireland is a separate country, which is part of the UK. Again, where Conor is not from. Also, McGregor is DEFINITELY not active.”

Someone else added: “Reading these replies it actually baffles me how we can be in 2022 and so many people aren’t aware Ireland is it’s own separate country.”

Others joked that they wouldn’t mind if McGregor was claimed as a Briton, with one person saying: “No it’s ok, they can have him. We don’t want him.”

It comes after the Dubliner suggested that his long-standing rival Dustin Poirier has a sexually transmitted infection (STI) in a recent Twitter spat.

In a tweet in the early hours of this morning, McGregor wrote: “Poirier has gonnorhea (sic), spread it around ahahhaahahah, he’s a goner.”

He also added some laughing face emojis to the tweet.

McGregor’s jibe was in response to a tweet by ESPN’s Brett Okamoto who had posted an update on Poirier after the fighter took to Instagram to say he had been hospitalised.

Okamoto wrote: ‘Some context on Dustin Poirier’s (@DustinPoirier) IG posts about being hospitalized … told me it’s staph, but he’s not responding to antibiotics over the last 24 hours. Undergoing further blood work now, hopefully get some answers today.’