Conor McGregor fires off since-deleted tweet digs at Poirier & family after UFC 264 leg-break loss

UFC star Conor McGregor has continued his feud with octagon rival Dustin Poirier, who beat him for a second time at UFC 264, and took to Twitter to post a series of now-deleted, cryptic tweets about the fighter and his family.

The pair faced off in a trilogy bout on Saturday with their series, which stretches back to 2014, tied at 1-1.

Poirier handed McGregor his first knockout loss in MMA's most elite championship in January, with the Irishman adopting a rare nice guy persona in the build up.

Made bitter by his loss, however, McGregor returned to his trash-talking ways ahead of their latest meeting, and was also furious when Poirier and his wife accused him of reneging on a payment to their foundation in Louisiana.

As fight night drew closer, McGregor continued to cross the line by insulting Jolie Poirier and accusing her of sliding into his DMs when posting a screenshot of a message request on social media.

In addition to claiming that Jolie wears the trousers in the Poirier household, he also issued death threats to 'The Diamond' and continued this act after a first-round loss by doctor stoppage brought on through a horrific leg fracture.

Subsequent post-fight footage from the T-Mobile Arena has shown Jolie Poirier giving McGregor the middle finger as he slumped on the cage unable to move, and the 32-year-old continuing his abusive tirade.

Releasing an upbeat video to his fans on Twitter from his hospital bed, though, McGregor used the same platform to fire off a set of cryptic tweets aimed at the Poiriers. 

One of them contained a trio of pictures without a caption which were a screenshot of an Instagram photo of Mateusz Gamrot's with Poirier holding his angle, a snap of Poirier and daughter Parker smiling and a cropped version of Dustin in the previous photo.

The next tweets were short and sweet, as one read: "I'm dangerous man" and the next was a simple: "Gonezo".

"I'm a nasty dude," McGregor continued. 

"Your wife is your husband," he said, in a dig at the married couple. 

"Hey you guys! I don’t want to associate any negativity with my foundation so I’d like to take this chance to apologize for Dustin’s wife trying to message me privately on Instagram," came his last correspondence. 

Fans said, however, that McGregor was partly borrowing lines from Poirier from a show aired ahead of their contest at UFC 264. 

One man unimpressed with McGregor's continued trash talk at the weekend was UFC chief Dana White.  

"Ah, yeah – I don’t like that. Yeah, that’s not good. Leave people’s families and wives and all that stuff out of it. Family has nothing to do with it," White stressed in his post-fight comments. 

That being said, it seems the UFC chief will still grant one of his favorite brawlers another shot at Poirier, which if he beats Charles Oliveira in a match planned for December, could be for the lightweight title.

"The fight didn’t get finished," White said.

"You can’t have a fight finish that way. We’ll see how this whole thing plays out. Who knows how long Conor’s out, so Poirier will do his thing until Conor’s ready."