After an endless amount of speculation it’s finally official, Conor McGregor will make his long awaited comeback against Michael Chandler in the main event of UFC 303 in Las Vegas on June 29th.
Dana White made the announcement last night during the UFC 300 post-fight press conference, revealing that the showdown will be contested at welterweight in a five round bout and will take on headlining duties at the International Fight Week event in Las Vegas.
“There are all kinds of things that go on behind the scenes, it’s all about timing,” White said of the long negotiation period to make the fight between the two rivals, who coached opposite each other on The Ultimate Fighter reality show last summer.
“Chandler has been ready but Conor hasn’t been ready. We talked about this at one of the press conferences recently, he had a lot of obligations that he had to deal with.
“What you don’t want him doing is accepting a fight when he’s got a ton of obligations and he can’t train 100 per cent for a fight.
“It’s never hard with Conor, I say it all the time Conor has been a great partner and easy to deal with. We’re back, he’s a smart dude and Conor is a die-hard UFC guy and will be till he retires and beyond.”
By the time the fight goes down it will have been almost three years since the 35-year-old McGregor broke his leg during the first round of a trilogy fight against Dustin Poirier at UFC 264 in July of 2021.
That counted as a TKO loss on the former two-division champion’s record, leaving him with just one win from his last four fights.
Despite that, McGregor has remained a superstar during his long absence from the Octagon, a fact confirmed recently when he starred in a re-boot of 80’s movie Road House opposite Jake Gyllenhaal in what proved to be Amazon Prime’s biggest film debut release ever, with 50 million viewers streaming it on the platform in it’s first two weekends of release.
With his movie obligations now completed, McGregor can turn his full attention to going up against the 37-year-old Chandler, who has been impatiently waiting on the sidelines for over a year waiting on this blockbuster opportunity to fight the sports biggest star.
A former three-time Bellator champion, Chandler shares a similar recent record to McGregor, having also lost to Dustin Poirier in his last fight and mirroring his run of just one win in his last four fights.
McGregor vs. Chandler fronts a UFC 303 card that is still in it’s fledgling stages, but will also feature Andre Fili vs. Cub Swanson and Michelle Waterson vs. Gillian Robertson.
