Bellator star Michael Chandler has voiced his disinterest in a fight with lightweight champion Brent Primus, but he hasn’t closed the door entirely on a fight with the man he dropped the belt to.
Former Bellator lightweight champion Michael Chandler (17-4) got back in the win column Saturday at Bellator 192. Picking up a unanimous decision over Goiti Yamauchi, despite eating a hellacious question mark kick, it was a hard fought win a long time in the making. It was Chandler’s first fight back since a leg injury saw him lose the 155lb title to Brent Primus at Bellator NYC last June.
Since then, Chandler has been vocal about looking for big fights, after a rematch with Primus failed to materialize. However, following his big win Saturday, Chandler admitted that the title fight may be next regardless.
“Lets call a spade a spade. I’ve been with this organization now for 8, 9 years. I’ve helped grow this company, and this company has done a phenomenal job of growing me” Chandler said of his relationship with Bellator. “It’s been a phenomenal symbiotic relationship since ESPN Deportes days, to MTV 2 to Spike and now to Paramount and CMT Simulcast.”
“I take pride in being a Bellator champion” he continued. “I never wanted to discredit what the Bellator championship has meant to be, and what the belts at my house meant to me. I wanted the rematch. Ten days after Madison Square Garden I ran five miles I said book the rematch.”
However, it wasn’t to be. Despite wanting to get right back in there with Primus, Chandler said that “the so-called champion was not ready. He was on maternity leave.” It’s a response Chandler didn’t understand, given that “it just so happens I adopted a child, I moved all the way across the country, I built a house, I have a lot of stuff going on. We are professionals and we are men, and it’s time to step in the cage and put the belt on the line, and he wasn’t willing to do that.” Ultimately, “there is a little bit of a bad taste in my mouth for that situation.”
That’s no doubt why he’s looking to fights with bigger names like Patricio Pitbull, and even welterweight Paul Daley. Yet at the end of the day, he admits that “I have a ton of respect for [Bellator CEO] Scott Coker, for what he has done for Strikeforce back in the day, and what he has done since day one since he set foot into this Bellator realm.” Chandler then added that “lets be honest, I’ll do what I’m told, and I’ll do it in a dominant fashion. We’ll see what happens, we’ll have some conversations and we’ll see what happens.”
Which sounds like, if it’s what Bellator wants, Chandler vs. Primus could be next.
