When Conor McGregor teased his big New Year’s Day fight announcement, Michael Chandler wasn’t sure what to think.
“I had an idea, but you never quite know,” Chandler told ESPN in an interview released Friday. “Is it gonna be another troll job? Is it gonna be another Conor center-of-attention deal? Is it gonna be silence? What tactic is he gonna use again to keep everybody on the edge of their seats? Not just me. Obviously he’s done a lot of things over the last year or so that was directly intended for me to hear and directly intended for my team to hear that everybody ran with.”
Indeed, the past year – particularly the past six months – has been filled with mind games from McGregor (22-6 MMA, 10-4 UFC), who’s promised “the greatest comeback in sports history” but has yet to deliver. Things took a step in the right direction on New Year’s, however, as McGregor announced on social media that he will return to the UFC on June 29 for International Fight Week in Las Vegas, and he his opponent will, in fact, be Chandler (23-8 MMA, 2-3 UFC) – which has been expected ever since they served as opposing coaches last year on “The Ultimate Fighter 31.”
The remaining issue is the fact that, despite McGregor’s announcement, nothing has been made official by UFC CEO Dana White or anyone else with the promotion. Chandler didn’t specify if either he or McGregor has signed a contract, but he said his team has been in touch with the UFC, and the understanding is that June 29th is the targeted date.
“I don’t know if I’d call (McGregor’s return) the greatest comeback in sports history, but, yeah, as of right now, June 29th is the date, and we are preparing for it,” Chandler said.
In a normal situation, coaches from a season of “The Ultimate Fighter” don’t wait a full year to fight each other. But with McGregor, anything goes. Contributing to the delay was McGregor’s withdrawal from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s drug-testing pool while the agency was still in charge of the UFC’s anti-doping program before their partnership ended Dec. 31. It’s believed McGregor withdrew so he wasn’t restricted to take only certain substances while recovering from a broken leg suffered in July 2021.
With USADA out of the picture and the UFC’s new independent drug-testing program underway, the road is clear for McGregor to come back. But with nothing but McGregor’s word and some assurance from the UFC, just how confident is Chandler that the fight with happen as planned?
“I have a hundred percent confidence that I’m fighting Conor McGregor on June 29th,” Chandler said, adding that only unforeseen circumstances such as injury or illness could ruin things.
And so, the former Bellator lightweight champion’s preparation for what would be the biggest fight of his career is about to kick into gear. Chandler said he plans on doing one-week minicamps in January, February and March at Kill Cliff FC in South Florida before beginning a full 12-week camp in April.
As part of McGregor’s announcement, he said the fight with Chandler will take place at middleweight – which would be a first for both men who traditionally have competed at lightweight. McGregor is a former UFC featherweight and lightweight champion, and he owns one victory (over Donald Cerrone in January 2020) at welterweight.
While he’s the utmost confident he will fight McGregor, he’s not so sure it’ll be at 185 pounds.
“Ultimately, I’m 50-50 on it. And ultimately it doesn’t matter,” Chandler said. “I spent five weeks around Conor. I don’t care if he wants to fight at 185, 170, 205, whatever it might be. You’ve got to remember: He doesn’t want to fight 155 because he wants everybody to believe he’s bigger than he is. He, in his mind, can’t fight at 170, because I called him out at 170, therefore he’s doing what I said at 170. So he has to say 185, just like he did in the intro scene of ‘The Ultimate Fighter’ telling me it was gonna be at 185. I don’t give a rip about what the weight is. …
“He always wants to establish dominance, whether it be via social media, whether it be the media with what he’s saying and what he’s doing. And he also wants to try to establish dominance to make people think that I am less than him. And that’s fine. I’ll take that all day long because I am confident in myself. I don’t have an ego. I’m ready to fight, and I’m ready to take this dude’s head off. Fighting at 185 makes him look bigger, sound bigger, feel bigger. That’s what Conor does. He’s done nothing his entire career but pump himself up – both in person by the way he walks, his stature, maybe risers in his shoes. I don’t know, but he does things to constantly make himself look, sound and feel bigger, because that’s the persona that he has tried to create.”
Ultimately, Chandler is content to let the UFC and McGregor iron out the details on the weight they’ll fight – just so long as they fight June 29.
“The UFC and Conor can figure that out and let me know what they’re thinking, and I can have an opinion on it,” Chandler said. “But as of right now, I couldn’t care less about the weight. The date and the opponent was all that matters.”
