UFC 303 is still a few weeks away, but it’s already been a serious rollercoaster for main event athletes Conor McGregor and Michael Chandler.
Just a few days ago, McGregor canceled all upcoming media obligations at the lsat minute, abruptly undoing a sold-out presser in Dublin, Ireland. “Obstacles outside of our control” were the official (and vague) excuse from “The Notorious,” but other rumors quickly surfaced of an alleged a minor injury. A day later, UFC “feelers” were sent out in search of a possible new main event options, and full blown panic initiated. Chandler didn’t help matters by abandoning his fight camp in Florida to return home to Nashville, and UFC CEO Dana White refused to address the issue directly.
Nobody was happy about the lack of clarity.
Just as all signs were pointing towards cancellation, veteran MMA reporter Ariel Helwani announced “great positivity” that the fight would happen as scheduled. A wide-smiling McGregor posted a flexing photo on Instagram, generating a bit more optimism. Now, the ball is really rolling, and Chandler himself is confirming the fight will go on as planned.
“The fight is happening,” Chander said on The Pivot Podcast. “Where we are right now, yeah, there’s a lot of speculation but the fight is on. June 29th, it’s happening.”
It’s been the better part of three years since McGregor was last seen in the Octagon, the result of a brutal leg break suffered in his last bout versus Dustin Poirier. Chandler’s last appearance also resulted in a loss to “The Diamond,” who choked out Chandler in the third round of a wild brawl about 19 months ago.
Conceive believe achieve….
yeah… where we’re at right now…
I’m starting to think the whole thing was a troll job after seeing that picture of Conor at his gynecologist on the examination table and his smirk.
Dana’s immersed himself in that garbage “youtube” world which includes pranks. I think it was yesterday he finally admitted that lame video of him acting annoyed leaving Howie Mandel’s podcast was indeed a prank.
Him or his team or even Conor concocted this nonsense to draw even more eyeballs to the fight is my thinking. It made the same or more headlines in MSM as the fight announcement itself. Cost nothing to do other than an irrelevant press conference in Dublin.
I’ll believe it once Conor makes the walk
2026
He’s leg will be a balloon in his post fight interviews.
Honestly tho, if I were Chandler, I would perhaps have held out this long because he’s at the end of his prime, fought all the top dogs, this is the one chance to make the big bucks. Alternatively, he could have fought around what 3-4 times during this span and made how much each fight? I dunno what his price range is: $500-700k per fight?
How much does he stand to make for the Connor fight? Is this really net gain at this point? Maybe it wasn’t worth holding out?
I guess he just needs to draw some sort of line. Perhaps it’s when this fight falls thru for whatever card it was scheduled. Weird situation. Connor, what a disaster.