Back In Business
Michael Chandler makes his long-awaited return to action this weekend when he takes on Charles Oliveira in the co-main event at UFC 309.
“Iron” Mike has not been seen inside the Octagon since suffering defeat at the hands of Dustin Poirier back in November of 2022 and has been the subject of one of the most drawn-out ‘will they, won’t they’ sagas in the history of the sport in the intervening time frame.
Following his loss to “The Diamond” two years ago, it was announced that that Chandler and Conor McGregor would appear as coaches on season 31 of The Ultimate Fighter before squaring off under the lights.
Following the completion of the series however, the expected announcement of a fight date failed to materialize. Despite the potential match up dominating the news cycle throughout 2023, fans had to wait until spring of this year before finally the pair were scheduled to headline UFC 303 on June 29th.
As (bad) luck would have it, McGregor succumbed to a toe injury and the bout fell through, leaving 38-year-old Chandler without a dance partner. The former Bellator champion has now given up waiting and will face “Do Bronx” this weekend in a rematch of their 2021 contest, which Oliveira won via 2nd-round TKO.
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“Conor’s doing his thing, I’m doing my thing” said Chandler during an appearance on The Ariel Helwani Show this week. “There are 600 other people on the (UFC) roster, he and she shall just be doing their own thing and that is it.
Chandler has effectively been in training camp for the bulk of the past two years, but rather than showing his frustrations, he’s looking at the situation positively. “I think if anything I think it was a great process for me” he told Helwani. “It was benficial, so many great things came from it”.
Could It Still Happen?
The fight against “The Notorious” promised to be the largest payday of Chandler’s career, and despite what was surely a very frustrating two years playing the waiting game, he still wants to step into the Octagon opposite the Irishman before all is said and done in their respective careers.
“Yeah I think ‘Chandler vs McGregor’ needs to happen at some point” Chandler insisted, “and I do believe it will happen at some point, and if he comes back, his road back to the UFC goes through one man, it goes through Nashville, Tennessee. We have to finish TUF 31 so I’ll take care of business on saturday night and we’ll see what is next.
“But ultimately too it’s about extreme accountability as well. I could have, at any given time, the first moment that Hunter called me and said, ‘Hey, we thought it was gonna be…call it September/July/August…whatever it was gonna be…the first moment he called me and said, ‘Hey, we’re gonna push it to this, it’s not happening until at least here, or at least here, or here’….any one of those moments I could have said, ‘Hey, Hunter, I’m done man, I’m not waiting any longer’.
“It’s all on me, I’m in control of my own career. They didn’t tell me to wait. They said, ‘This is when it is going to happen, do you want to wait or do you not want to wait?’ This is on Michael Chandler. this is a Michael Chandler decision that I made”.
Michael Chandler faces Charles Oliveira at UFC 309 at Madison Square Garden this Saturday.
