Michael Chandler spent the past 18 months waiting for a fight against Conor McGregor to finally materialize, but instead he returns to action at UFC 309 for a rematch against Charles Oliveira.
The long, winding saga that started with Chandler booking a coaching stint on The Ultimate Fighter back in March 2023 with the promise that he would eventually clash with McGregor finally came to an end when he booked this new fight for Nov. 16. Considering how much time he missed in his career waiting for the McGregor fight only to move onto an entirely different matchup, it would be completely understandable if Chandler held a major grudge against the former two-division UFC champion.
It turns out that’s not the case at all.
“I don’t blame him for anything. I really don’t,” Chandler said about McGregor when speaking with MMA Fighting. “The outsiders can look and say, ‘Man, he must hate Conor. Conor did this to him. Conor did that to him. The UFC did this to him.’ I did all this myself. At any given time, I could have jumped off the train and said ‘UFC, let me fight someone else.’ At any given time, I could have said I’m done with this. At any given time, I could have said no to obligations and just changed course. I put myself in this position. It’s a position I wanted to be in. It was a decision that I made.
“Do I want to punch Conor in the face and beat him and get my hand raised? Absolutely, but I want to do it in the confines of competition and we will do it at some point. No ill will whatsoever. I caused this. I chose this path. This path is now leading me to Nov. 16 and the biggest fight of my life.”
While the rematch against Oliveira was recently announced, Chandler says he actually knew about the matchup a month ago and was just waiting for the UFC to make it all official.
He may not be holding onto any unnecessary disdain towards McGregor for how the whole situation played out, but Chandler admits he dealt with a lot of inner turmoil with all the delays and the eventual fight cancellation back in June.
On that date, Chandler was only a couple of weeks away from realizing his dream fight when McGregor dropped off of UFC 303 after suffering a broken pinky toe in training. Chandler assumed the matchup would be re-booked for a few months later, but time passed and he never got word on a new date.
He never stated it publicly but Chandler acknowledged that he had a deadline in his mind for the end of 2023 and if the McGregor fight didn’t get scheduled by then, he was moving on.
“December was definitely the cutoff but also we were talking about June with a broken pinky toe, which is a six-week injury,” Chandler said. “Get back in there, put a two-month training camp in and you’re good. We should have been able to fight by August, September, October.
“Immediately when it sounded like it wasn’t going to be December, I was like, hey boys, I’m going to go bet on myself. I’m going to roll the dice.”
Since accepting the bout against Oliveira in November, Chandler hasn’t heard exactly why McGregor isn’t fighting in 2024, but he trusts the UFC did everything possible to re-book the fight.
As much as McGregor means to the promotion, Chandler knows the UFC has a business to run and there was only so much time any of them could wait for the Irish superstar to return.
“You’ve got Conor tweeting saying, ‘Give me my date, I want to come back at this time, I want to fight this guy, I want to fight, I’m ready to get back in there.’ But then his social media shows something else,” Chandler said. “Are you a guy that can be relied upon? Are you a guy that’s taking it as seriously as your opponent?
“When you look at the way I live my life. You look at the way Charles lives his life. You look at the way that [Dustin] Poirier and [Justin] Gaethje and all these guys that are in this sport, you see the way that we train, you see the way that we live our lives, we are fighters and that is our No. 1 priority in our professional lives. It doesn’t look like that is the truth for Conor.”
In the same way that he isn’t holding a grudge against McGregor for their fight never happening, Chandler can’t sit back now and play the ‘What if?’ game with his career.
Instead, Chandler is staying focused on his task at hand with the Oliveira rematch in November, while refusing to live in the past because he can’t get that time back now.
“I don’t have any regrets because this is the way it was always supposed to be I guess,” Chandler said. “You could always look back and have 20/20 vision and say I wish I would have done this or I wish this would have worked out differently. I’m at peace with where I am.
“I’m 59 days away from fighting Charles Oliveira in a No. 1 contender fight as the co-main event to Jon Jones’ last fight ever, Stipe Miocic’s last fight ever, at the world’s most iconic arena. It’s not the Conor fight but it sure is a heck of a consolation prize. No regrets. Here we go.”
