The Mac is back.
Conor McGregor will return to the UFC Octagon to face Michael Chandler in a welterweight bout at UFC 303 on June 29 in the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, it was officially confirmed late Saturday night during the UFC 300 post-fight press conference. The fight, which headlines the card, will bookend the UFC’s annual International Fight Week festivities, and will come three years after McGregor’s most recent fight in the cage in which he sustained a severe injury to his left lower leg.
The confirmation of the fight comes about a year after Chandler was first selected as McGregor’s next opponent, after which they competed as opposing coaches on a season of the UFC’s long-running reality series ‘The Ultimate Fighter.’ Chandler will compete for the first time since a November 2022 defeat to Dustin Poirier.
McGregor has been officially cleared to fight since last month and had been linked to last night’s UFC 300 card — however, promotional requirements for his feature film debut, ‘Road House,’ meant that competing on the card would be improbable.
“June 29th, Conor versus Chandler,” White said with a grin as he addressed the media following a wildly successful UFC 300 card in Las Vegas. “Five round, 170-pounds.
“It’s all about timing,” White said of the fight. “Chandler’s been ready but Conor hasn’t been ready. We talked about this at one of press conferences recently. He had a lot of obligations that he had to deal with. What you don’t want him doing is accepting a fight when he’s got a ton of obligations and he can’t train 100 percent for a fight. So, here we are tonight.”
White added: “When you look at that injury, it’s happened in the UFC. You just saw Chris Weidman come back, Anderson [Silva] came back from it, you’ve seen it in football. It’s probably one of the nastiest injuries that you can possibly get. You see guys with broken arms all the time [but] it’s hard for us as humans to wrap our head around that bone breaking. It’s just a nasty injury, and it’s a rough recovery too.”
