After days of heightened speculation and cryptic messaging, Michael Chandler has confirmed his fight with Conor McGregor is on.
Irishman McGregor and American Chandler were set to share the stage in Dublin on Monday (3 June) at a sold-out 3Arena for a launch press conference. Yet, with less than 12 hours until doors opened, the event was abruptly called off, fuelling rumours that the fate of the fight was now in jeopardy.
The postponement arrived as social media was inundated with oblique messaging from both camps. McGregor, 35, teased UFC fans with an Instagram post from a treatment table accompanied by a lone flexing arm emoji for a caption. Meanwhile Chandler, 38, seemed to suggest he had left his training camp in a separate post.
But any cancellation angst has seemingly been eased after Chandler confirmed the bout in a recent appearance on The Pivot podcast with Ryan Clark, Fred Taylor and Channing Crowder.
Asked what the situation was with the McGregor fight, Chandler said that he was just working away in fight camp, noting that he has "got this fight coming up". The former Bellator champion continued to play coy, before confirming "the fight’s happening. Obviously where we are there’s a lot of speculation, but yeah, the fight is on, June 29, it’s happening.”
UFC champion demands to know how Conor McGregor has become so "jacked"
Chandler also explained on the cancelled event on 3 June, noting how he'd been up late watching the fight between Islam Makhachev vs Dustin Poirier when he received a phone call from UFC's Hunter Campbell.
“He called me and let me know ‘hey, it’s looking like this thing isn’t going to happen’," Chandler said. "Then I laid there and thought about it for quite a while and the next morning we got on a call and he said ‘it’s not happening’.”
Conor McGregor teased fans on his Instagram with this post along with a lone flex arm emoji caption (@thenotoriousmma/Instagram)Chandler has been preparing for McGregor since the start of last year when it was announced that the pair would be coaching opposite one another on The Ultimate Fighter. McGregor, former dual-weight champion, has not fought since breaking his leg in a July 2021 defeat by Dustin Poirier, who knocked out “Notorious” six months earlier. Chandler last fought in November 2022, also losing to Poirier, who won via submission.
The latest cancellation UFC social media and fans around the world into fits of worried speculation, with the event already breaking records at the gate for money made. “Obviously a cancelled presser, not that big of a deal,” Chandler said. “It happens.
"But its the layers in which ‘okay if the presser is cancelled is there something else going on? Then obviously immediately speculation starts going all over the place in 2024 with social media and all that stuff.
Michael Chandler confirmed his fight with Conor McGregor is not at risk of being cancelled on a recent podcast appearance (2023 Zuffa LLC)“I just kept resting on the fact that I can only control what I can control. I have been doing that now for a year and a half with this whole fight if you’ve been following it with all the different dates that have gone on and were supposed to happen but didn’t.
“Now here we are fighting in June of 2024, and it’s a case of ‘if you want to hear God laugh, tell him your plans’, right? This isn’t about me, I ain’t in control so we’re just going to roll with it.”
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