It looks like the Michael Chandler v. Conor McGregor fight isn't ever going to happen

They spent a long time building this thing up just for it to fall apart at the last minute. I was one of the detractors that when Conor didn't turn up for a press conference in his home country of Ireland that though the excuses and the silence from Conor's side was a sign of a much greater problem and when the weak X-ray came out many days later showing that Conor had injured his pinky-toe being the reason why he bowed out, I called BS on that.

Nobody really knows what happened with McGregor and the UFC as well as the McGregor team has resorted to saying almost nothing. UFC did their best to bring us a quality PPV after the main card was scrapped and then followed up with a rather weak card in England. The upcoming card in Australia - which has to start at 9am local time in order to accommodate the USA audience - is rather weak as well. One could think that UFC is biding their time when it comes to the McGregor / Chandler showdown that they built up for a long period of time, but the lack of anyone even talking about it raises a very different issue that suggests that they are walking back the fight entirely.

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While a lot of this is definitely promotional material for his liquor brand "Proper 12" when he was at a BKFC event chugging grog during the event in the crowd, it also is not the behavior of a person that is training hard and taking his physical state seriously. This is not a one off event either. At other events McGregor is seen living the lifestyle of a fan rather than the life of someone that is trying to get into tip top shape for an upcoming fight.

At another BKFC event Conor took to the stage to say some nonsensical words before chugging a can of stout and shouting things at the fighters and the crowd that got cheers but when reality set in people saw this as what it very well could be "the end of Conor as a fighter."

While nowhere near their level, I once trained for MMA fights many years ago. Your entire schedule has to be filled with the utmost diligence paid to a training schedule and traveling around to booze it up and promote a brand is not one of the things that you do. For me this was an extremely minor league and one that was of dubious legality, yet I still woke up every day with all of my time managed towards fitness, nutrition, sparring, and training. I would go to sleep early and have the same thing happen the next day. This was my life at a 20 something and I had no financial backing and would retire from the sport with a record of 1-2. Conor no doubt has significantly more help than I did but this doesn't change the fact that if he isn't putting in the work and is guzzling drinks at shows, his fitness can't possibly be a priority to him.

Michael Chandler himself chimed in to politely get the world to see that he too believes that his "big fight" with "The Notorious One" is very unlikely to happen.

Now let's look at this from Conor's perspective if we will. He still has a lot of historical mojo under his belt(s) to be able to claim to be one of the baddest men on the planet. His victories remain in our memories, and so do his losses. Let's keep in mind that he hasn't had a clear-cut victory since knocking out Cowboy Cerrone in around 40 seconds back in 2020.

Although it was in an impromptu interview with Dana White where he might not have had all of the information he needed in front of him, Dana is not one to shy away from answering questions and he said "We'll figure it out. Not this year. He won't fight this year."

If you were in Conor's shoes and were riding a wave of perceived excellence by most people would you tarnish that by getting into the octagon and losing badly? Think about it for a second: he has a budding film career potentially - I think he is too short and not a good actor but these choices aren't up to me - he has a massive booze company that is doing quite well, and he is a promoter for multiple fighting organizations, some of which he owns part of. He is building an empire while his name still carries with it some level of the "Greatest of all time" along with it. If he gets into a sanctioned fight and gets completely worked, that legacy is done with unless he spends years rebuilding. At his age, he doesn't have time for a rebuilding phase.

We also need to keep in mind that in no way does Conor actually need the purse from a UFC event. With his net worth, the 1-3 million he would get from fighting is a drop in the bucket and extremely irrelevant compared to how much money he is making from doing other things and those "other things" are likely a lot more fun and have far less chance of horrible injury. Let's not forget when he split his leg in two in a fight vs Poirier. This sort of things isn't going to happen when you are dressed up and promoting booze in front of a bunch of fans that are happy just to have you there.

I would like to see Conor fight again but I think that will only happen once he is unable to keep himself in the public eye with his current antics. For the time being, if it is a strategy of his to put himself in the public eye by behaving the opposite way that a fighter should in public, it is working. Who knows? Maybe McGregor is one step ahead of all of us and he isn't really getting drunk and partying but instead poses for pictures to keep us all thinking that and all the while he is just on his way back to the gym. The way the media works these days, this sort of spin would be effective and if there is one thing we know about Conor, he certainly knows how to use the media to his advantage.

For me, I would like to see the man fight in MMA a few more times before he officially hangs up the gloves but from a "brass tax" point of view I can understand why it is that he would be taking his sweet ass time making that sort of thing actually happen. There is too much on the line