Michael Chandler was ready to fight Conor McGregor after being pushed in the face when the pair got into an altercation on The Ultimate Fighter.
This week's episode of the reality show saw McGregor's close friend and No.1 seed Lee Hammond suffer an heart-breaking defeat to Kurt Holobaugh after dominating the two rounds. The devastated Irishman fell to his knees after the fight, before getting into the octagon to console his pal.
However, things turned ugly when he and Chandler began to get into it, with McGregor taking issue with his rival's insistence that he wasn't don't enough for his team. The former two-weight world champion had reportedly been skipping morning training sessions, and wasn't present for Hammond's weigh-in.
He pushed Chandler in the face, with the former Bellator champion declaring during last night's After TUF that he was ready to fight there are and then. “Well, hey, let’s just look at it, it went from zero to a hundred very quickly," he said. "To be honest with you, I didn’t expect it.
"Obviously, we’re ready to protect ourselves at all times. The first thing was, holy cow, okay, he just put his hands on me. What’s about to happen? Is he in my space? But obviously, he backed up. I obviously got pushed back, and we both kind of started walking towards the centre of the cage.
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“He starts taking off his coat, and I’m like, okay, what, we’re going to fight right here? Obviously, you never quite know what’s going to happen,” Chandler continued about the shove. “We’re on a reality show, but it’s also two dudes who want to fight each other. So I was ready for anything, and obviously, I was ready to fight right there if we had to, but let’s be honest, we’re on a reality show.”
McGregor and Chandler are due to fight at the end of the season, with a December date initially touted for the T-Mobile Arena. However, the Irishman will need to return two negative drug tests to USADA and re-enter their testing pool for six months, which may not yet have happened.
It would be McGregor's first fight in over two years after suffering a gruesome broken leg against Dustin Poirier in July of 2021 causing him to take a massive break from the sport. In that time he has bulked up considerably, and the bout is likely to take place at welterweight despite the pair being contenders at lightweight.
