Ever since Michael Chandler and Conor McGregor were announced as the coaches for The Ultimate Fighter Season 31, it’s been expected the two would face off in their next respective bout sooner rather than later.
‘Sooner’ is now out of the window as filming for TUF 31 began back in February, and eight months later, we don’t have an announcement for a date that Chandler and McGregor will fight. The reasons for the lack of progress have been laid at the feet of McGregor, with many people wondering if he will ever return to competitive fighting due to all the fame and money he has accumulated over the years.
Add to the mix the serious leg break McGregor sustained against Dustin Poirier at UFC 264 in July 2021. It’s been over two years since McGregor last competed, and one of the conditions he needs to fulfill to fight in the UFC is to enroll in the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) drug testing program, the process of which is believed to take six months before a fighter is cleared to fight. The status of how long McGregor has been enrolled, or if he is even enrolled, remains unclear.
Thoughts on McGregor fight
Michael Chandler spoke with Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour to talk about his potential fight with Conor McGregor and revealed that he doesn’t expect the fight to happen this year:
”The fight could have been as early September, right after the show, and then we were talking about December, and now it looks like December is not going to happen,” – Chandler told Ariel Helwani.
Helwani asked Chandler to summarize his 2023 so far, which began shortly after his fight with Dustin Poirier at Madison Square Garden. Although the result didn’t go his way, Chandler delivered another entertaining night for the fans, winning the Fight of the Night bonus for his efforts. Soon after, he began filming The Ulitmate Fighter under the impression he would get the biggest fight of his career, a bout against the biggest star MMA has ever seen, Conor McGregor.
”It’s not just another fight (against McGregor). You know, this is the biggest fight we may have seen in a very long time, right? The comeback of Conor, the biggest comeback of all time in sports history, as he calls it. And then the twelve weeks on ESPN with all the viewership every single week, people following the storyline.”
Although he’s playing it cool, if you read between the lines, there is frustration from Chandler as he recollects all the work he put into preparing for the fight, not just physically but also from a promotional point of view, making reaction shows for fourteen weeks on his YouTube channel aimed at building the fight up more. It could all end up being for nothing as we’re no sooner to getting a date for the fight than we were a few months ago.
The frustration in Chandler’s voice comes from the fact the fight hasn’t happened yet as opposed to if it will happen. Chandler remains very optimistic that a fight with McGregor will go ahead and reveals there are some reasons behind the scenes for the delay – things that Chandler isn’t prepared to share. In the meantime, he’s enjoying the time off from competing to build other income streams for after his MMA career.
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