Michael Chandler has had his eye on Conor McGregor for years and doesn't think there's anything nefarious about what went down in his UFC 329 comeback fight.
McGregor left fans sorely disappointed this Saturday when his main event rematch with Max Holloway ended in just 69 seconds due to McGregor suffering a leg injury. The bout marked McGregor's first UFC fight since 2021 and the crowd at T-Mobile Arena reacted in stunned silence when the bout was suddenly waved off.
In the aftermath of the controversial ending, there has been widespread speculation as to whether McGregor had a pre-existing injury and, if so, were UFC officials aware that McGregor was not in condition to compete. Chandler is one of many fighters jumping to McGregor's defense and he shared his thoughts in a video posted to Instagram.
“A guy like Conor who comes out in the first three seconds, jumps across the cage, turns his body, throws a kick, lands weird, leg buckles,†Chandler said. “Then throws another kick, leg buckles. Throw a punch, leg buckles, and everybody's trying to figure out was Conor injured prior to the fight? Did Conor just show up and hoodwink everybody and he just showed up for a paycheck and doesn't care who he hurts in the process?
“I would be absolutely surprised, like the most surprised person on the planet if Conor just showed up for a paycheck, limped in there, and said, ‘I don't care. I'm going to give you guys one minute, shave my head into a mohawk, show up, do the intros, and then just bow out one minute later. You can say what you want about Conor, Conor's mistakes are well-documented, Conor's shortcomings are well-documented over the past 15 years in this sport. One thing he is not, he's not a quitter. One thing he is not, is a bamboozler.â€
Chandler also doubts the UFC would allow a severely compromised McGregor just to draw viewers in for what turned out to be a non-fight.
“The UFC is not the type of organization that's going to have conversations behind closed doors and say, ‘Hey, it's all good, man. We're going to get everybody hooked in on this Paramount stream and then you're going to bounce out one minute in,'†Chandler said. “That's just not what they do, it's not how they operate business.â€
The 38-year-old McGregor has been out of action since July 2021, when he broke his leg in a trilogy bout against longtime rival Dustin Poirier. In recent months, the former two-division UFC champion had made multiple public declarations regarding his dedication to religion and a rededication to training and preparing for a comeback.
Chandler pointed out that fighters are susceptible to all kinds of injuries once the cage door closes and that McGregor's disastrous opening gambit wasn't out of character for him.
“The fact of the matter is the body is a crazy thing and it can handle a lot,†Chandler said. “It can handle a lot of damage, it can handle a lot of contortion, and then at other times you look at the body and you see the way bodies react or how results happen in a fight and it looks as though a guy who's 100 percent durable in the past and then takes one little misstep and all of a sudden a body part crumbles or the equilibrium goes away.
“What I'm getting at is the body is unpredictable and every fight is unpredictable and if you look at Conor—because I've had a lot of people say, ‘Man, why would Conor do that? He came out like an idiot, jumped across the cage and threw a kick.'—Conor always does that. Every single fight. When I was training to fight him, I was expecting within the first five minutes, some kind of spinning wheel kick, some type of flying knee, some type of flying Superman punch. He did the Superman punch against ‘Cowboy' Cerrone within the first five seconds. Multiple fights within the first five seconds he's done a spinning wheel kick at the very beginning. Stalking a guy, getting him on the back foot, immediately throwing something crazy to get a guy thinking and remembering that hey, you're in the octagon with Conor McGregor, and Conor McGregor is a dominant human being. That's what he's trying to establish at the very beginning.â€
Previously, the closest McGregor came to a comeback fight was in 2024, when he was scheduled to fight Chandler at UFC 303. Chandler had been chasing a McGregor matchup for years and after they filmed a season of The Ultimate Fighter on which they served as opposing coaches, it appeared they would finally share the octagon. Unfortunately for Chandler, McGregor suffered a toe injury that removed him from UFC 303 and delayed his comeback another two years.
Regardless of McGregor's many outside-of-the-cage transgressions, Chandler believes when it comes to fighting, McGregor is strictly professional.
“I get the conspiracy theories, I get that people are upset,†Chandler said. “Conor's not the type of guy to do that. Say what you want about him, but he's a man of honor and integrity when it comes to the confines of competition and even trying to book fights.
“I believe he wants to fight me. I believe he tried to fight me. I believe he wanted to fight me, I believe that's how the negotiations went, and other plans were made. But the honor and the integrity of wanting to stick to and be a man of his word since he pulled out of that fight back in 2024, International Fight Week against me, I think he wanted to actually be a man of his word and see through to putting his name on that dotted line that had my name on it. So when it comes to the confines of competition, the dude would not just show up to get a paycheck.â€
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