Well…at least his foot worked out just fine.
Michael Chandler had a slight mishap when warming up for his fight against Tony Ferguson. Minutes before ‘Iron’ entered the Octagon opposite of ‘El Cucuy’ at UFC 274 on Saturday, he suffered a minor injury.
Chandler recently appeared on The Pat McAfee Show and showed off a now swollen ring finger on his left hand. He explained that it happened after drilling one more technique with his Sanford MMA teammate and training partner Demarques Jackson.
“I dislocated my [ring] finger about 20, 30 minutes before the fight blocking a kick,” said Chandler. “So I got to get that looked at.
“My buddy Marques, a great training partner of mine,” continued Chandler. “He was throwing kicks — I had this great idea. Warm up was already done. I’m going out in about 10, 20 minutes and I’m like, ‘Hey, throw some left high kicks at me. I want to block them and go to the body shot’. And he threw a normal kick like he’s done a thousand times at me, and it ended up going fingernail, all the way back. Bent it all the way back.”
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23450462/Screen_Shot_2022_05_10_at_10.07.58_AM.png)
Screenshot from The Pat McAfee Show on Youtube
Chandler knew his ring finger was dislocated immediately, but there was no time to fret over it.
“And I’m like at this point, boys, at this point, we keep the adrenaline going,” said Chandler. “I said, ‘This ain’t a hand, it’s a hammer and we got to go. We got to go!’”
Chandler went on to deliver a ‘Knockout of the Year’ candidate with a front kick to the jaw that slept Ferguson in the second round. The No. 5 ranked contender returned to the win column after consecutive defeats to Charles Oliveira and Justin Gaethje at UFC 262 and UFC 268, respectively.
Once he recovers from his dislocated finger, Chandler has a few options to consider for his next UFC outing. The 36-year-old cut one hell of a promo during his post-fight interview that included fiery callouts of Oliveira, Gaethje and Conor McGregor.