It was a Christmas weekend in Dublin and the joy knew no bounds for Conor McGregor.

Joy.

It’s the word the mixed martial arts fighter returns to again and again as he fondly recalls his bedroom encounter with a hairdresser in the penthouse suite of a four-star Dublin hotel on a Sunday afternoon in December 2018.

He smiles and speaks softly as he describes the relaxed atmosphere of his joyful night out, which turned into a day, always emphasizing the ‘happiness’ and ‘excitement’ of this ‘fun’ party, which began in several nightlife in the city and ended with ‘athletic’ sex between him and Nikita Hand.

On his second day in the witness box on Thursday, he recalls the mood and emotion “as clear as day” in sharp detail, as he recounts his extensive recollection of the many sexual positions they enjoyed and the different parts of her body that he held. during their two bouts of ‘extended’ sex, interrupted by a long sleep break.

He says she begged him to continue. But he couldn’t. It had been a pleasant and happy event.

Nikita Hand paints a much darker picture.

She says he raped her so hard that the tampon got stuck at the very top of her vagina and had to be removed with tweezers when she went to the Rotunda Hospital the next day.

It never happened, the Ultimate Fighting Championship star told the court Thursday.

“It was broad daylight. There was no tampon.”

The former hair colorist is now suing McGregor and his friend James Lawrence for civil damages. Both men deny her claim of alleged assault.

The multi-millionaire fighter said on Thursday he was “extremely petrified” when initially confronted with the accusation and questioned by gardaí.

Court 24 at the Supreme Court was packed again for his evidence on Thursday. McGregor seemed more subdued than the day before. Sometimes his voice was barely audible. The small jabbing movements with his arm to emphasize points were also missing.

But it didn’t matter. The Dub entering the octagon as The Notorious was a huge draw, and his every word was met in absolute silence by the packed gallery above and the many journalists and members of the public crammed below.

It was a silence compounded by some compelling testimonies.

How should I take into account the bruises and the impacted tampon? McGregor said Ms Hand had attended several Christmas parties over the weekend. Calmly and slowly he said to her lawyer: “Your client had sex with several people during 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 fall for him?

“How stupid,” was the response. McGregor denied suggestions that Lawrence had been used as a cheat.

Nikita Hand and her partner, who has been by her side the entire time, listened to him with their 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 plain language” that his DNA had been found in exactly the same location as the tampon, she looked up. McGregor shook his head slightly and exhaled. His lawyer Remy Farrell objected. McGregor reiterated that there was no tampon.

The penthouse suite was booked in the early hours of the morning when the sports star was partying with two women at Krystle nightclub. But they went home – he left one of them in his car at Clontarf.

He then headed back to the South Side where he met Nikita Hand and her colleague Danielle Kealey, but not because he wanted them as “replacements” for the other two.

It was ten o’clock in the morning and they had partied all night. They were driven to Drimnagh, where McGregor asked his friend to join them, telling him that “there were two nice ladies here asking for him”.

He regularly books hotels as a “rest stop”. He likes to go home refreshed after a night out and before “getting back to normal life”, which is why he decided not to be driven to his home in Kildare.

Sometimes there were parties and sex in the hotels if he was “lucky enough”.

Ms Hand told gardaí she was very drunk and scared in the hotel.

“I think we can safely conclude from every piece of viable, unbiased evidence that there was no sign of distress,” McGregor stated. “It was a good night and that is clear from beginning to end.”

Joy to the world.

Until the lawyers were consulted and the guards began their interrogation.

And it all ended in a small, joyless courtroom on Chancery Street.