Michael Chandler has been riding the pine for the past two years waiting for his chance to fight Conor McGregor, but the lightweight contender is hoping to turn everything around over the next 12 months.
Luckily for Chandler, he’ll have his chance to return to the cage next weekend at UFC 309 in New York City when he meets former UFC lightweight champion Charles Oliveira in the co-main event. It will be a rematch from their first meeting back at UFC 262, which was a lightweight title fight Chandler lost via second-round TKO. It all comes full circle on Nov. 16 at Madison Square Garden.
While Chandler was holding out hope for a lucrative matchup with McGregor that was previously booked for UFC 303 and then canceled, fighting “do Bronx” on one of the biggest cards of the year isn’t a bad consolation prize. In fact, if Chandler is able to defeat Oliveira next weekend it could open more doors at lightweight than a victory over McGregor would have.
In a recent interview with Kevin Iole, Chandler mapped out his plans to defeat Oliveira at UFC 309 and then take the combat world by storm in 2025. Check out the video below along with a breakdown of Chandler’s perfect scenario:
— COMBAT (@C0MB4TT) November 8, 2024
- Defeat Oliveira at UFC 309
- Fight McGregor in early 2025
- Fight Islam Makhachev for the undisputed UFC lightweight title in early summer
- Defend the UFC lightweight title and fight for the ‘BMF’ title against Max Holloway to close out 2025
It would be very shocking to see Chandler run through this type of competition and line himself up for a busy 2025 schedule of this nature, but crazier things have happened. The lightweight veteran does appear to be in the best shape of his career, but he’s just 2-3 inside of the Octagon since debuting back in 2021 and seems to get clipped or hurt in just about every fight he has.
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