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UFC lightweight calls Michael Chandler ‘delusional’
With each passing day the likelihood that Michael Chandler will actually get to fight Conor McGregor seems to decrease. Even when the fight was announced, as a promotional tool for selling the latest season of The Ultimate Fighter, many thought this was a match-up destined for failure.
Why would McGregor take a dangerous fight against a lesser known fighter which offers neither a title nor any bragging rights he’s particularly interested in. With McGregor’s long injury rehab, his USADA pool flip-flopping, and his Twitter rants talking about fighting anyone but Chandler, it certainly seems like ‘The Notorious’ doesn’t have his mind on the former Bellator champ.
The situation has lead to Chandler being out of action since November 2022, making him an after-thought in the lightweight division. Even if he did get the McGregor fight, and beat-up the aging former champ, that’s unlikely to springboard him into title contention.
If Chandler is still hanging on to the idea of a McGregor fight, he’s “delusional” according to fellow top 15 ranked lightweight Renato Moicano. The Brazilian mocked Chandler on The MMA Hour this week.
“The division is a mess right now,” he said. “We have guys like Michael Chandler, he’s delusional.”
“Conor is not going to fight him,” continued Moicano. Maybe never. Conor is on another level of craziness right now, we can see from the past two years the stuff he’s been doing outside of UFC and I think he loves the attention, but he doesn’t like to fight anymore.”
“Chandler, get over it my brother, you’re not going to have this fight. I don’t know what Chandler is going to do.”
Michael Chandler has been hit and miss in the UFC
UFC Black History posterboy Michael Chandler came to the promotion with a lot of buzz. The ex Bellator lightweight champ was famed for his exciting style, which had lead to bangers with Eddie Alvarez and the Pitbull brothers.
On signing with the UFC he immediately seemed to catch the eye of Dana White, which resulted in him landing the role of back-up fighter in the lightweight title bout between Khabib Nurmagomedov vs. Justin Gaethje at 2020’s UFC 254.
His debut came a few months later with a sensational TKO finish over Dan Hooker on the so-called Fight Island. Then he lost back-to-back contests, first to Charles Oliveira and then to Gaethje.
Last May he beat the declining Tony Ferguson with a gruesome front kick and followed that up with a submission loss to Dustin Poirier (in a fight where he was accused of fighting dirty).
Since then he’s been doing his damnest to convince us all, and maybe himself, that he’ll fight Conor McGregor (perhaps out of some belief that McGregor can still draw eye-balls like he used to).
However, should that fight never come to fruition, it would mark over a year of time wasted for the 37-year-old fighter.
Time to move on Mike?
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