Michael Chandler’s patience didn’t pay off as he hoped.
The perennial lightweight contender was positive throughout his saga with Conor McGregor that he’d land his biggest career clash. It was an admirable level of optimism rarely seen in MMA, but ultimately that optimism kept Chandler out of action for two years. When he finally returned in a rematch against Charles Oliveira at UFC 309, he came up short again, losing a largely lopsided unanimous decision.
Like his first war with Oliveira in May 2021, the bout wasn’t without big moments for Chandler — he almost scored a stoppage finish late. Still, Chandler came away disappointed by his efforts.
“I am not happy with my performance,” Chandler said Wednesday on Uncrowned’s “The Ariel Helwani Show.” “I would give myself a two out of 10. I cannot overstate how horrible of a performance this was or set of circumstances it was after that first round, compared to what my vision was for what I’m capable of. And I believe I beat Charles Oliveira nine times out of 10.
“Obviously, I’ve lost to him twice now. Two out of two, I have 100% loss rate to Charles Oliveira, so I understand why people might roll their eyes at that. But I’m just so unhappy with the performance, man. I’m so excited to get healthy and I’m so excited give the fans and my supporters and you and everyone else out there the performance they deserve. And my coaches, man — Henri Hooft and Robbie Lawler and these guys, they pour their lives into me, and it just was not the performance that I wanted.”
Chandler, 38, took to social media Tuesday to show off a gnarly video of his swollen knee and leg. Though he feels fine now and can walk, the damage from his battle with Oliveira remains evident.
Chandler said it hampered his mobility severely throughout most of the five-round contest.
“I’m disappointed,” he said. “I could replay the fight a thousand times in my head and I could have made some different decisions.
“Something happened to the leg in that first grappling exchange, actually. Pretty sure I ripped the MCL almost off the bone, tore the meniscus. And I keep remembering in the fight … [I told my corner early,] ‘Guys, I can’t get my footing. I don’t know what’s going on with my footing.’ I kept putting water under my feet, getting sweat on my feet, trying to get more grip. I just couldn’t get my footing underneath me. It turns out I did something to that left leg in that first round. Two minutes [in], three minutes, or whatever it was, and I just wasn’t able to really put a lot of weight on it.
“I hate these looking back excuses,” Chandler added. “I’m not an excuses kind of guy. What happens in the fight game happens and it’s a learn-on-the-fly type of scenario, and I wasn’t able to learn enough on the fly to continue to change the game plan and switch things up.”
From opening bell, Oliveira was firmly in control and dominated with his phenomenal offensive grappling arsenal. Flowing between takedowns, seamless transitions and ground-and-pound, the former UFC lightweight champion was met with almost no resistance from his rival.
A Hail Mary finish was needed for Chandler going into Round 5 and the world knew it. Despite not being known for big victorious late-fight bursts in his career, Chandler nearly pulled one out for the ages.
He couldn’t finish the job, but Chandler got as close as he could, dropping Oliveira on the feet then barraging the Brazilian with a flurry of ground strikes. Yet as close as Chandler came to staging an incredible comeback, it wasn’t without controversy.
Pressed against the cage, Chandler appeared to deliver several illegal strikes to the back of Oliveira’s head, which went unnoticed by referee Keith Peterson. But UFC’s commentary trio of Jon Anik, Daniel Cormier and Joe Rogan all vigorously pointed out the strikes in question, and that, for Chandler, was a bother to hear on his rewatch.
“The misinterpretation of what the back of the head is by the unified rules of mixed martial arts, the misinterpretation of what cage-grabbing is and a couple different things, it’s all water under the bridge at this point, but more than anything, I’m an honest guy,” Chandler said. “I try to live pretty full of integrity and full of honesty, and a narrative that has been painted is not very interesting to me. I’m not very happy about it, but it’s all a part of it.
“I’m not going to say I didn’t do anything wrong. OK? I’m not going to say that people couldn’t look at it and splice it and look at it under a fine-toothed comb and a magnifying glass. But the unified rules of mixed martial arts say that there is a line drawn from the crown of the head down to the neck, one-inch variants on either side. So you’re talking about a two-inch area on the back of someone’s head that is considered ‘the back of the head.’
“If you watch 90% of the shots, at least, most of them — almost all of them, or at least where I was aiming — all of them, my hand, my fist was catching the ear,” he continued. “So if you’re catching the ear, that is not the back of the head. And actually, what you and I would call back of the head is not the actual definition of the back of the head. That two-inch strip down the back of the head [is the official definition]. And a referee who was within two feet away never said one thing about it. And then you’ve got commentators who were 35 feet away saying it’s the back of the head.”
The Oliveira rematch isn’t the first time Chandler has garnered a label of being a dirty fighter, whether justified or not. In a prior appearance against Dustin Poirier, Chandler was accused of fish-hooking Poirier’s mouth with his fingers when seeking potential chokes. Poirier won that fight with a third-round rear-naked choke, but hearing things afterward was equally frustrating for Chandler in both instances.
“Things are happening, it’s going a thousand miles an hour,” Chandler said. “If the referee was yelling at me, ‘Hey Michael, watch the back of the head,’ or, ‘That is the back of the head,’ he might give you one shot, say it’s the back of the head and then I would’ve changed courses, I would’ve changed the trajectory. But none of them were going straight down. They were all coming at a 45-degree angle, toward the side and the ear.
“And ultimately, man, you’re down on points, you’re dropping a guy, you’re trying to hit him and get him out of there. I’m not 100% thinking about that little red line between that back of the head the whole time.”
“You want to say I suck at fighting, you want to say I’m not a good technician, you want to say I’ve got low fight IQ, you want to say I should’ve wrestled and not struck, or struck and not wrestled — if you want to talk about these tactical things, that’s completely fine,” Chandler added. “But when you talk about, ‘Hey, this guy’s a dirty fighter because he was striking to the back of the head,’ and it wasn’t really the back of the head, and quite frankly we have a guy who gets paid to be locked in the Octagon with you, who has reffed thousands of unified mixed martial arts bouts and never said anything, just like I think it was Herb Dean who didn’t in the Poirier fight — it’s interesting, man.”
Despite his 2-4 record, it’s been an action-packed UFC run for the former three-time Bellator lightweight champion. Because of that, in addition to an explosive post-fight callout, Chandler still finds himself in good standing to potentially fight McGregor.
McGregor’s own future remains uncertain after the Irishman was found liable for sexual assault in civil case stemming from 2018, but Chandler remains optimistic the two will finish their stories.
“There’s a huge fight out there that needs to come to fruition, and I do believe it does in the first half of 2025,” Chandler said. “And that’s perfect timing for me and I think that’s perfect timing for him.”
