Unless something dramatically changes, 2024 will come and go without Conor McGregor fighting in the UFC.
Despite McGregor expressing his wishes to return this year, UFC CEO Dana White has been adamant that “The Notorious” won’t compete in 2024 after a broken toe cancelled his fight against Michael Chandler, which was originally scheduled for UFC 303 in June. All signs appeared to point toward a December showdown for the long-awaited matchup, but White revealed that while he talked to McGregor, “he won’t fight this year.”
Recently retired UFC welterweight Matt Brown has long believed that McGregor will never fight again, and his opinion was only strengthened by this latest delay.
“He’s gone,” Brown said of McGregor on The Fighter vs. The Writer. “I’ve said it for a long time now. How many years have I been saying it? He’s done. I don’t discount that there’s a chance that he comes back, but the chances of him coming back are way lower than the chances of him not fighting again. He’s at, like, a 20-percent chance of coming back, I think.
“He’s doing great staying in the news, doing great keeping his name out there. We’d all love to see him fight still. I’d love to see him fight Chandler, whoever I’d love to see Conor fight — if he’s training properly, staying off the various substances or whatever it is. Come in the real Conor. Live your life all want when you’re 45 and you’re retired and you’re totally out. Enjoy it then, but for now let’s see all the fights. Let’s see them. I want to see you fight.”
There’s a myriad of reasons why Brown never bought the McGregor comeback after the Irish superstar suffered a gruesome broken leg in his last UFC appearance in a loss to Dustin Poirier back in 2021.
Truth be told, Brown’s opinion on McGregor doesn’t differ that much from White, who has long questioned if the former two-division UFC champ would actually fight again one day.
“Conor McGregor — maybe he’ll fight again, maybe he won’t,” White said on The Jim Rome Show in June. “You never know with some of the guys that get to that level [of wealth]. You never know when you’re going to see them again.”
While McGregor’s future remains cloudy, Chandler remains stuck waiting after first signing up for the matchup upon agreeing to serve as a The Ultimate Fighter coach in early 2023.
From McGregor still recovering from his injury, to a required six-month waiting period to fight again after re-entering the UFC’s anti-doping program, to the broken toe in July, Chandler has been forced to the sidelines as his 39th birthday creeps closer in April 2025.
Assuming the fight doesn’t get scheduled in 2024, Chandler has missed at least two years of his career waiting for McGregor, and there’s still no guarantee his patience pays off.
“In my view, you only live once and this is a short window of time in your life that you get to compete at the highest level,” Brown said of Chandler’s situation. “I think he’s going to look back when he’s 50, 60 years old and be like, ‘I missed out on a couple of years there just waiting for a payday.’ I don’t think he’s hurting for money anyways [but], ‘I waited for this payday and I could have been out there putting myself on the line.’
“I think Michael Chandler’s a competitor. I think he wants to be out there putting it on the line. I think he’s going to end up regretting this someday.”
Perhaps the biggest risk for Chandler would be booking a different fight and then potentially missing out on the matchup against McGregor. He could have done that multiple times over by now, but Brown argues even if Chandler fought and lost during the past two years, that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t eventually get McGregor anyways.
“I’ve said it a million times, say he fought four times and those two years and he went 2-2 — Conor still fights him,” Brown said. “It’s not like Chandler’s an up-and-comer that’s going to be on Fight Nights or the prelims or something. He would have had to lose all of his fights for Conor to say, ‘I’m not fighting you.’ Maybe even then Conor might fight him. Conor’s going to need a tune-up fight coming back. He might see that as a tune-up fight. I don’t think he would have lost anything by fighting however many times.
“I get it why he’s waiting, I guess. Maybe they’re just stringing him along. We don’t know what he’s hearing. We don’t know the voices in his ear, what they’re telling him. Hindsight’s always 20/20, right? It’s easy for us to look back and say, ‘You should have fought all this time,’ but it’s like, OK, we know in hindsight you should have fought, but at what point do you put your foot down and say, ‘OK, I’m fighting again.’”
Brown also argues that because McGregor has so many questions surrounding him after at least three years off and a 1-3 résumé in his past four fights, that beating him now isn’t the same as handing him a loss when he was coming off his mythical “champ-champ” status nine years ago.
Of course, Brown doesn’t fault Chandler for seeking the fame and fortune that comes along with a McGregor fight, but at this point, that’s all he’s after.
“It’s clear the wait is for a payday,” Brown said. “It’s not a legacy thing. It’s not for competitive nature. I think Michael Chandler’s probably going to look back on it and say, ‘I should have jumped in there.’ Maybe he won’t. I can’t read his mind, I don’t know what’s going on in his life, but I’m guessing he’s probably solid on money. It doesn’t really add up to me why you’d want to do that.”
