Washington — Former Bellator lightweight champ and UFC title challenger Michael Chandler is proud to be representing America at UFC Freedom 250 at the White House this Sunday.
“Iron” Mike is also looking to bounce back from a trio of losses, to Dustin Poirier, Charles Oliveira, and Paddy Pimblett, in his fight against Mauricio Ruffy. That last one appears to have gnawed at Chandler (23-10) more than most.
“I’m very disappointed in my performance in my last fight. And I think sometimes as a fighter, you need those to really look at your blind spots, to really look at the areas where you need to improve,” Chandler told media outlets including Cageside Press during the White House card’s media day on Wednesday. “Areas where maybe you feel like you need to improve, where you feel like you need to tweak your training, tweak your mindset, but you’ve just been firing on all cylinders going 100 miles an hour ahead and just keep doing the same of what you’ve been doing.”
“Gave me an opportunity to kind of step back, recalibrate, kind of coil the spring so to speak for the greatest platform and the greatest opportunity of my life. And in my opinion, a great opponent, the perfect opponent to fight on the White House lawn.”
Over the past few years, Chandler has circled a fight with Conor McGregor, one that was briefly booked at UFC 303 only for the Irish star to pull out. The lightweight spent a lot of time on the sidelines waiting for the opportunity that never came, leading to a lot of talk among fans and pundits. Yet in a way, his loyalty to the fight, and the UFC itself, appears to have paid off. After all, he might be mired in a slump, but he’s still fighting at the White House.
That has to be somewhat vindicating, and have the monkey off his back so to speak.
“Yeah a little bit,” Chandler agreed, speaking to Cageside Press. “You’ve got certain fighters [not] on the card who after the fact, after they were not put on this card, say ‘well I didn’t want to fight on the card anyway.'”
“There’s no way in the world that somebody doesn’t want to fight on this fight card. When you talk about eyeballs, when you talk about platform, when you talk about reach, when you talk about the greatest moment of opportunity to showcase your skills to the world. So I always looked at it that way, at that’s me not even putting my blue-blooded American hat on.”
Of course, Chandler is a “very proud American” who wanted to represent the country, and the promotion, on the biggest stage possible, he noted. That’s been the case all along, even when he was chasing the McGregor fight.
“There was a lot of chatter. These last couple of years have been very interesting, but I think I’m a better man because of it, and because I’m a better man because of it, I’m a better husband and father because of it,” Chandler explained. “Sometimes things just don’t work out. Sometimes the things that you are chasing doesn’t work out. Sometimes you hitch your dream to a shooting star, and it just doesn’t work out.”
Throughout the process, Michael Chandler “did a lot of soul searching, and there were a lot of decisions that needed to be made, a lot of pieces needed to be put into place. But as you saw, whenever Conor pulled out of that fight, it was like, recalibrate for a month, lets see what happens, and I threw myself into the fire, Madison Square Garden, co-main event against one of the most dangerous guys on the planet, Charles Oliveira.”
“I stole the show that night even in a loss, and then got right back on the horse probably a little too soon, going into that Paddy fight, coming off an injury and stuff that never becomes public, that you guys never find out about. But here we are. I’ve had a year to lick my wounds and look myself in the mirror and know that I can be better. And I’m going to be better, and I have been better over the last year, and I’m going to show that on fight night.”
Watch the full UFC Freedom 250 media day appearance by Michael Chandler above.
