MMA

Michael Chandler explains why he holds ‘no ill will whatsoever’ towards Conor McGregor

Published

1 week ago

September 29, 2024

Conor McGregor still targeting Michael Chandler for 2025 return: ‘I’d like it to be Chandler’

Michael Chandler spent the past 18 months waiting for a fight against Conor McGregor to finally materialize, but instead he returns to action at UFC 309 for a rematch against Charles Oliveira.

The long, winding saga that started with Chandler booking a coaching stint on The Ultimate Fighter back in March 2023 with the promise that he would eventually clash with McGregor finally came to an end when he booked this new fight for Nov. 16. Considering how much time he missed in his career waiting for the McGregor fight only to move onto an entirely different matchup, it would be completely understandable if Chandler held a major grudge against the former two-division UFC champion.

It turns out that’s not the case at all.

“I don’t blame him for anything. I really don’t,” Chandler said about McGregor when speaking with MMA Fighting. “The outsiders can look and say, ‘Man, he must hate Conor. Conor did this to him. Conor did that to him. The UFC did this to him.’ I did all this myself. At any given time, I could have jumped off the train and said ‘UFC, let me fight someone else.’ At any given time, I could have said I’m done with this. At any given time, I could have said no to obligations and just changed course. I put myself in this position. It’s a position I wanted to be in. It was a decision that I made.

“Do I want to punch Conor in the face and beat him and get my hand raised? Absolutely, but I want to do it in the confines of competition and we will do it at some point. No ill will whatsoever. I caused this. I chose this path. This path is now leading me to Nov. 16 and the biggest fight of my life.”

While the rematch against Oliveira was recently announced, Chandler says he actually knew about the matchup a month ago and was just waiting for the UFC to make it all official.

He may not be holding onto any unnecessary disdain towards McGregor for how the whole situation played out, but Chandler admits he dealt with a lot of inner turmoil with all the delays and the eventual fight cancellation back in June.

On that date, Chandler was only a couple of weeks away from realizing his dream fight when McGregor dropped off of UFC 303 after suffering a broken pinky toe in training. Chandler assumed the matchup would be re-booked for a few months later, but time passed and he never got word on a new date.

He never stated it publicly but Chandler acknowledged that he had a deadline in his mind for the end of 2023 and if the McGregor fight didn’t get scheduled by then, he was moving on.

“December was definitely the cutoff but also we were talking about June with a broken pinky toe, which is a six-week injury,” Chandler said. “Get back in there, put a two-month training camp in and you’re good. We should have been able to fight by August, September, October.

“Immediately when it sounded like it wasn’t going to be December, I was like, hey boys, I’m going to go bet on myself. I’m going to roll the dice.”

Since accepting the bout against Oliveira in November, Chandler hasn’t heard exactly why McGregor isn’t fighting in 2024, but he trusts the UFC did everything possible to re-book the fight.

As much as McGregor means to the promotion, Chandler knows the UFC has a business to run and there was only so much time any of them could wait for the Irish superstar to return.

“You’ve got Conor tweeting saying, ‘Give me my date, I want to come back at this time, I want to fight this guy, I want to fight, I’m ready to get back in there.’ But then his social media shows something else,” Chandler said. “Are you a guy that can be relied upon? Are you a guy that’s taking it as seriously as your opponent?

“When you look at the way I live my life. You look at the way Charles lives his life. You look at the way that [Dustin] Poirier and [Justin] Gaethje and all these guys that are in this sport, you see the way that we train, you see the way that we live our lives, we are fighters and that is our No. 1 priority in our professional lives. It doesn’t look like that is the truth for Conor.”

In the same way that he isn’t holding a grudge against McGregor for their fight never happening, Chandler can’t sit back now and play the ‘What if?’ game with his career.

Instead, Chandler is staying focused on his task at hand with the Oliveira rematch in November, while refusing to live in the past because he can’t get that time back now.

“I don’t have any regrets because this is the way it was always supposed to be I guess,” Chandler said. “You could always look back and have 20/20 vision and say I wish I would have done this or I wish this would have worked out differently. I’m at peace with where I am.

“I’m 59 days away from fighting Charles Oliveira in a No. 1 contender fight as the co-main event to Jon Jones’ last fight ever, Stipe Miocic’s last fight ever, at the world’s most iconic arena. It’s not the Conor fight but it sure is a heck of a consolation prize. No regrets. Here we go.”

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Football

Taylor added to long Scotland injury list

Published

49 mins ago

October 7, 2024

NewsAdmin

Taylor added to long Scotland injury list

Celtic defender Greg Taylor will miss Scotland’s Nations League matches against Croatia and Portugal.

The left-back, 26, was absent for Sunday’s win at Ross County after picking up a calf injury in the midweek Champions League defeat to Borussia Dortmund.

Taylor, capped 14 times, also withdrew from the squad for the opening defeats to Poland and Portugal in this campaign.

Head coach Steve Clarke was already without 10 players through injury and there are doubts over Angus Gunn.

The Norwich City goalkeeper was withdrawn at half-time on Saturday after a taking a heavy knock to the ribs.

Vice-captain John McGinn is among those unavailable, with Nicky Devlin, Liam Lindsay and Andy Irving all called up for the first time.

Scotland visit Zagreb on Saturday before hosting Portugal three days later.

Portugal lead Group A1 on six points, with Croatia and Poland both on three and Scotland yet to get off the mark.

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Football

Listen: The weekend debrief – drama at the death

Published

2 hours ago

October 7, 2024

NewsAdmin

Listen: The weekend debrief – drama at the death

Iona Ballantyne, Jamie Murphy and Mark Atkinson review the Scottish Premiership action.

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Football

How Premier League sides are using set-piece coaches to find edge

Published

4 hours ago

October 7, 2024

NewsAdmin

How Premier League sides are using set-piece coaches to find edge

Yet not every club feels the same. Tottenham, under Ange Postecoglou, do not have a specialist set-piece coach and, since the beginning of last season, Spurs have conceded more set piece goals (excluding penalties) than every Premier League team, except for Nottingham Forest.

At Chelsea Mauricio Pochettino didn’t have a set-piece coach, believing he did not need one, before the Blues hired Cueva with a new set-piece department being set up at Stamford Bridge.

That particular issue was one of the reasons for Chelsea replacing Pochettino with Enzo Maresca in the summer.

There needs to be buy-in for the position to work, and Austin MacPhee was one of the only staff kept on when Unai Emery replaced Steven Gerrard at Aston Villa two years ago.

Given how hands-on Emery is, it is a seal of approval in itself.

MacPhee – who joined Villa from Midtjylland in 2021 – was also Scotland’s set-piece coach but stepped down last month to spend more time with his ill father.

He has been credited with Villa’s improved set-pieces and last season they became the first team in Europe to score 20 goals from set plays.

Former Northern Ireland boss Ian Baraclough worked with MacPhee for the national side between 2020 and 2021.

He said: “Austin was innovative. I gave him free reign and it was a good relationship. He was very strong in his beliefs on things. Sometimes you may have to pull the reins on it, but the majority of the time you could see things working.

“It’s just whether you’ve got enough time to work on that but I’m not surprised he’s at Aston Villa and doing well. He communicates very well and he’s one of the standouts in the Premier League when it comes to that role.”

Though Baraclough rightly points out set-pieces have not suddenly become important – they have always been worked on, but have become more inventive.

“Now you have something like the draught excluder,” he said.

“That was something we deployed in Bosnia (in 2020). I hadn’t seen it before and Austin came to me and said ‘what about this? I’ve seen this at Atletico Madrid’.

“We were one of the first British sides to use it and the players were thinking ‘what’s all this about?’ You could see them laughing and giggling. It was Paddy McNair we used on the floor, it’s genius really.”

As teams increasingly focus on the fine margins, former Blackburn and England striker Chris Sutton emphasises how focus on set-pieces is nothing new.

He said: “The difference in the past was that managers who wanted to work on them, did so themselves.

“I get how the game has evolved since then with the new technology that is available, but it is like these things and ideas did not exist back in the day, when they definitely did.”

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Football

Hobinger scores twice as Liverpool beat Spurs in thriller

Published

5 hours ago

October 7, 2024

NewsAdmin

Hobinger scores twice as Liverpool beat Spurs in thriller

Marie Hobinger scores a stoppage-time penalty as Liverpool register their first Women’s Super League win of the season with a thrilling 3-2 win at Tottenham.

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Football

Notts Forest red card made game more difficult – Enzo Maresca

Published

6 hours ago

October 7, 2024

NewsAdmin

Notts Forest red card made game more difficult - Enzo Maresca

Chelsea head coach Enzo Maresca says the game got “more difficult” after Nottingham Forest’s James Ward-Prowse was sent off during their 1-1 draw at Stamford Bridge.

MATCH REPORT: Chelsea 1-1 Nottingham Forest

Watch Match of the Day 2 on BBC iPlayer.

Available to UK users only.

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