I'm gonna come right out and say that I do not believe this horse-crap. If it had been an injury the cancellation of the Dublin presser wouldn't have been called off so abruptly and right after a bunch of photos of Conor leaked online of him partying his ass off the night before in clubs.
Then they waited weeks before making the official announcement that the Irishman was out of the fight. They haven't provided any details as to what the injury actually is so I am going to call bullshit on this one.
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This was set to the likely the biggest UFC event of the year, and this was before we even considered who was on the undercard. When you have Conor in the main event, you don't really need much of an undercard and with his elimination from being top-billed, well, there isn't much of a card left. The main event has tenatively been changed to a matchup between champion Alex Pereira and former champion Jiri Procházka, which is a good matchup, but not nearly the sort of thing that draws in people like McGregor vs. Chandler does.
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If you find yourself thinking "didn't this fight JUST HAPPEN?" you would not be alone in your thinking because yes, it was a mere 7 months ago that this fight already took place. It is quite unusual for UFC to turn around and re-do a fight that happened so shortly in the past, but they are truly in a situation where their backs are against the wall because not only is McGregor out and Chandler doesn't have a suitable replacement, but the previous co-main-event featuring Jamahal Hill also had to be called off because of a far-more-believable injury to Hill.
So basically the entire card has to be re-thought.
I have never attended a UFC event because the ticket prices are insane but I wonder that happens in this sort of situation if you had already purchased tickets. Do you get the opportunity for a refund or reduced price for the tickets? Going to a McGregor event carries a much larger price-tag than a replacement fight, so I wonder how this is handled. Imagine that you dropped a few thousand dollars to get a ticket to see what could be one of the last times that Conor fights, only to have the fight called off just a few weeks out. I would be seriously pissed off and would expect to get a full refund. In my mind it is like really looking forward to a vacation in Hawaii and 10 days before your flight is going to take off you get notified that the flight will be going to Florida instead... whoops! Our bad!
The UFC is being very covert about what is actually going on with Conor here and Conor is playing nice on his Twitter as well. I think that his PR team has likely taken over his account to do some sort of damage control because if it was up to Conor he would no doubt be cussing everyone out and blaming everyone but himself for this fight being called off at the last minute.
Maybe Conor doesn't need the UFC anymore. He hasn't fought in the Octagon since July of 2021.