Michael Chandler had headed into 2026 appearing to be very confident that his long-awaited fight with Conor McGregor would happen at the UFC: White House event in June, but he’s now admitted to being discouraged after Dana White appeared to pour cold water on the match-up.

“My reaction is we will see,” Chandler said on The Ariel Helwani Show. “We’ll see how this whole thing plays out. Obviously, nobody has any idea what the fights are going to be on the White House card. It is going to be the biggest card they’ve ever assembled. Whether it be the biggest fights, obviously the biggest venue and, you know, we’ll see. Is that 100 percent how it’s going to be, me and Conor not fighting at the White House? I don’t know. All I know is I can control what I can control and that’s me just doing exactly what I’ve been doing since Day 1, since I started the sport.

“Obviously, it’s not encouraging. It’s not great to hear, but I’ve also heard many things that were not encouraging that turned out to be not true or just flat-out false, so we just keep on going. Until the fights get announced, until Conor McGregor gets announced his next opponent, until I do or do not get announced as his next opponent or do or do not get announced as being on the White House card, until then all we can do is just hope and pray and kind of see what happens.”

Despite his new-found concerns though, Chandler does still feel in his heart-of-hearts that the fight will still get made in the end.

“I wouldn’t go as far as to say ‘deflated’ because I’ve still got the confident expectancy that I’m fighting Conor McGregor on the White House lawn. So until I am proven otherwise, we’ll just continue on this course of action until the announcement gets made. That’s where we’re at.”

One way or another Chandler shouldn’t have too much longer to wait to find out as Dana White claimed this week that he expects to have the full fight card draw up by mid-February.