Michael Chandler confident of Conor McGregor despite constant delays

Michael Chandler is confident that he will fight Conor McGregor on his return to the octagon this year.

Chandler and McGregor were scheduled to fight at UFC 303 but it was called off as the Irishman injured his foot. However, the 35-year-old is hoping to return to the octagon in September this year at UFC 304.

UFC 304 will be hosted in Saudi Arabia, making it the first UFC event to be hosted in the Gulf Country.

“I’m not really that worried about it. Conor can’t— at this point, and I’ve said this publicly, I’m not letting him off the hook. For a while there, yeah, of course he would love to fight somebody other than Michael Chandler, with what I bring to the octagon,” Chandler said in a media interaction.

“I think there’s no way he comes back to the UFC and doesn’t fight me. So if I do pivot, if there are other names being thrown out, if there are huge fights that I can go ahead and pivot and take, whenever he is ready to come back, his road back to the UFC goes straight through Nashville, Tennessee, and Michael Chandler — and that’s it,” he added.

McGregor, who last stepped inside the octagon in July 2021 when he broke his leg in a fight against Dustin Poirier, has 22 wins and six losses while his opponent, Chandler, has a 23-8 record in the UFC.

It is worth mentioning that McGregor lost three of his last four fights including back-to-back defeats against Poirier at UFC 257 and 264 and a famous submission defeat against the undefeated UFC star Khabib Nurmagomedov at UFC 229 on October 7, 2018.