There are two very important dates coming soon for Michael Chandler, but sadly neither give him an exact timeline for his long-awaited fight with Conor McGregor.
First up is April 24, when Chandler turns 38 years old. Next is November 12, which would mark two full years since Chandler last competed in the UFC. In other words, Chandler isn’t getting any younger and he can’t make up that lost time, yet he remains steadfast in his desire to stay sidelined until he can finally get his hands on McGregor.
UFC analyst and retired welterweight Alan Jouban argues that at this point, Chandler really has no choice but to continue waiting for McGregor — even if that means not fighting again until the end of 2024.
“You look at Michael Chandler, you’ve got to hold out, in my opinion,” Jouban said on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer. “At 38 years old, you say I waited two or three years for this huge Conor fight, this huge payday, and now I’m going to sit out all this time and not get the reward? I’m going to put that aside and go back to a contract negotiated payment fight against somebody in the top 10?
“Maybe Chandler has one or two fights left in him. I don’t know what he gets paid, but if he’s going to go back to a pay scale where he’s going to make $100,000 or $200,000 and fight two tough guys, or he can stick to what he’s doing and get a couple of million dollars to fight Conor McGregor with all these question marks surrounding him — you’ve got to stay the course and fight Conor McGregor.”
Despite not fighting since 2022, Chandler has still managed to stay in the spotlight through appearances, interviews, and businesses he’s started in his down time.
Most recently, he popped up on WWE Raw, where he unleashed a fiery promo aimed at McGregor in front of a packed house in Anaheim, Calif. That doesn’t necessarily soothe the sting of sitting for nearly two years and still waiting on a date for the fight, but Jouban believes Chandler has at least made the best out of a bad situation.
“All these opportunities that came up that probably weren’t going to be there before the Conor thing,” Jouban explained. “He did The Ultimate Fighter, got a lot of publicity from that. He was on ESPN a lot doing interviews. The WWE thing, TKO Group coming together looking for guys exactly like Michael Chandler, he nailed that. I don’t think any fighter in the UFC could have cut a promo quite like that. Not just doing so well, but he took his style of making a hot mic moment and he merged that with the WWE world. He seemed like a wrestler that had done that before.
“For a guy who hasn’t been able to fight for so long and he’s holding onto this fight so closely, he has been able to monetize from it, he’s been able to make money. He’s been having appearances. His brand has continued to grow and he’s been able to spend time with his family, let injuries on his body heal and get stronger.”
As much as it might seem that Chandler is the jilted prom date who continues to wait for a limousine to pick him up despite the dance already being over, Jouban doesn’t exactly see it that way.
When McGregor finally fights again, he’ll return following an even longer layoff — July will mark three years since his last appearance — and he’s coming back from a devastating broken leg suffered in his trilogy fight with Dustin Poirier.
McGregor remains the biggest draw in the sport so he could fight almost anybody and sell tickets, pay-per-views, and merchandise, but he undoubtedly wants to make a successful comeback. Looking at the landscape at lightweight or even welterweight right now, there are no layups among any of the top fighters in either division, but at least Chandler’s style gives him a better chance to win.
“I don’t care what anyone says about this, I don’t see Conor coming back and ever looking like he used to,” Jouban said. “He’s not. He’s been away too long. His body has changed drastically. He’s had a severe type of life-altering injury. Guys that have those type of injuries, they don’t come back and throw kicks the same.
“Do I feel like he’s fully recovered? He’s back to as strong as he’ll ever be moving on from this injury. But with the time that has gone by, the injury, not being active, the body change, whatever he was taking while he [recovered] — I’m not even going to get into that, but his body obviously changed, he was taking some stuff, he put on 20 pounds of muscle, he did the movie, he’s coming up, going down on weight — he’s not going to be the same guy. Conor doesn’t want to go in there and fight a Mateusz Gamrot, fight one of these Arman Tsarukyan, young, hungry lions that are still in the prime, the peak of their careers. He needs a 38-year-old Michael Chandler that will step in there and step into the fire and go to war with him. They need each other.”
Nothing about the situation is ideal, especially with Chandler already sitting out for nearly two years while he’s still healthy and ready to compete. But Jouban says too much time has already passed to just give up and move on to a different fight.
“It would suck at the end of the day for Chandler not to get rewarded with this fight,” Jouban said. “But this is the best possible outcome waiting for a fight for [two] years than any fighter could have in terms of the reward he could receive.”
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