Michael Chandler doesn’t want your sympathy.
It emerged last week that former Bellator champion Chandler will have to wait a little longer to get in the cage with Conor McGregor after it was confirmed by UFC boss Dana White that an injury has delayed the Dubliner’s return to active competition.
The confirmation came just days after Chandler was scheduled to fly to McGregor’s hometown to participate in a press conference ahead of the much-anticipated bout — but despite the setback, Chandler says that he is emboldened by the situation and says that he isn’t dwelling on circumstances outside of his control.
“I got the rug pulled out from underneath me at the last possible moment,” Chandler said in a video posted to social media on Monday.
“I just had got done with my last sparring session [on[ Thursday morning, had been hearing rumblings since Monday obviously, but really got the call about an hour after my last sparring session was completed. An hour after a celebration.
“Anybody who has trained for a fight or anybody who has gone through a training camp for something, you go through a really hard block and then, in order to peak, you get toward the very end, you don’t go hard anymore, as to throw yourself into the fire and take the chance of injuries, over training, bumps, bruises, cuts, all those different things.
“I had just gotten done with that. The happiest and healthiest, hardest to kill, most dangerous man I have ever been in my entire life, in that moment. To 30 minutes later getting a phone call that all of that was for naught.”
“So what do I do now?” he added. “A little bit of uncertainty in my life. When’s this fight going to happen? What date would it be re-booked for? What venue? How bad is the injury? Reports have come out that it’s not that bad, just needs a little bit of a delay. But still, no guarantees.
“But I thrive when there are no guarantees. Just a walk-on kid from High Ridge, Missouri, who has continued to trod in a forward trajectory no matter what the opposition, no matter what the circumstances, no matter what the situation. It’s not up to me to will outcomes into existence. It is up to me to do the work. We let the work talk. We do the work. And we do the work until we become undeniable.”
He also reserved a warning for those online who have offered commiserations: don’t.
“Don’t you dare disrespect me by feeling sorry for me,” he said.
“Don’t you dare disrespect me by having any kind of sympathy. Be emboldened by my situation. Be emboldened by my steadfastness and my immovability, of hitching my dreams to a shooting star and continuing to move forward. If you’ve been on this journey with me for a long time, you know how I operate. You know where my mindset is, where my mental is.
“And it is nowhere near down in the dumps. I am emboldened by this test, and this test ain’t done yet. And this test shall turn into part of my testimony. So we keep moving forward in the face of adversity, with complete disregard to previous failures, previous setbacks, previous things outside of out control, and future opposition.”
