After injuring his leg in a TKO loss to Dustin Poirier in July 2021, McGregor (22-6 MMA, 10-4 UFC) is planning to comeback in 2023. Chandler has challenged McGregor to a welterweight bout on many occasions.
After a hard-fought battle, Poirier submitted Chandler (23-8 MMA, 2-3 UFC) at UFC 281. Cormier thinks that Chandler should excite McGregor since he has faced two of the division’s biggest hitters in Dustin Poirier and Justin Gaethje.
“I think Michael Chandler’s last fight is why he might get the Conor McGregor fight,” Cormier said.
“We saw him try and wrestle Dustin Poirier and even though he’s a wrestler, and he’s in phenomenal shape, he did get tired. In the third round he got tired and when he got tired, he made a mistake, and Dustin submitted him. But he also was willing to stand with a guy that hits hard, a guy that’s predominantly a striker, and he tested himself.
“I think because he fights in that way, it makes a guy like McGregor go, ‘Wait a minute. I want him, because I know this guy is gonna be there to fight. I know this guy is gonna be there to hit, and I also know that this guy will not be trying to wrestle me the entirety of this fight. He’ll fight me, he’ll stand with me, and he doesn’t have the background that I have in striking that will allow for me to have an opportunity to beat this dude.’”
Since McGregor hasn’t submitted to a drug test in 2022, he’ll need to enroll in the USADA program again and go through six months of testing before he’s cleared to compete again. The 34-year-old great recently stated his desire to return to competitive swimming in February, which would put his earliest possible return to action as August.
