Michael Chandler has seemingly come to terms with a Conor McGregor fight not happening. What did we learn?

Well, it’s finally happened. Michael Chandler has finally accepted (or so he says) that his dream of a big-money fight with Conor McGregor is really and truly dead.

Apparently all it took was a weekend’s worth of video footage showing McGregor downing drinks in the BKFC ring and living it up in a leather vest at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota in order to convince him. Seems that Chandler, like the rest of us, saw the latest evidence of McGregor’s hard-partying walkabout and concluded that this was not, in fact, a man laser-focused on an MMA comeback.

And, because this is just how things work in our bizarre modern times, the final rift proved to be a social media argument over support for former president Donald Trump (with McGregor since deleting some posts).

So now it’s over. That’s what both men seem to be admitting, anyway. And the rest of us are left to reflect on the lessons of Chandler’s choice to wait (and wait and wait) for a payday that never came. What is to be learned from this experience? I have a few thoughts:

1. For the prizefighter, time is a precious resource

You know why you see so few fighters successfully challenge contracts in court? Because it takes time. The legal process is slow and arduous. Promoters know this. They rely on it in those rare instances when fighters actually lawyer up and push back.

Promoters and lawyers have time on their side. Fighters don’t. Their skills atrophy as they age. Their window of opportunity for maximizing their earnings closes quickly. And it’s not only because Father Time does a number on us all — it’s all because fans forget. You go a year or two without fighting, and the sport can move on without you. Which leads me to the next lesson …

2. If you’re going to wait, know how long you’re waiting for

Maybe the best recent example of a fighter knowing when to sit and wait is the saga of Francis Ngannou. After defending the UFC heavyweight title against Ciryl Gane in January 2022, he opted to sit out the remainder of his UFC contract while recovering from knee surgery.

Many people criticized this move at the time, saying Ngannou was a fool to turn down the money the UFC was offering him to stay. Less than two years later he made many millions in a boxing match with Tyson Fury, in which he did shockingly well. Less than six months after that he made more millions in a boxing match with Anthony Joshua, in which he did … not so well.

Point is, it made sense for Ngannou to wait because he knew (approximately) how long he was waiting for. He needed to wait for the sunset clause in his UFC contract to kick in, then he could grab much bigger paydays in boxing.

3. Don’t put all your eggs in one unpredictable basket

Stick with the Ngannou example for a moment. The other thing that made it a smart move for him was that he didn’t have to wait for just one fight to materialize. At the time, there were at least three or four heavyweight opponents who made sense for him, and he knew he’d score more money in one fight with any of them than he would in several fights with the UFC.

Chandler, on the other hand, was waiting only for McGregor, a guy who’s spent the past several years drifting in and out of the fighting life while battling legal troubles and controversies and even pursuing a potential movie career. There are at least a half-dozen ways that this man could end up unable or unwilling to book a fight, and that’s without even factoring in the usual culprits like training injuries.

McGregor was always going to be an unreliable dance partner for Chandler. He tends to get distracted. He sees some fighter look good in a main event and the next thing you know he’s on social media teasing a fight with him. He also has enough pull with the UFC that he could always simply demand a different fight, and it’s not like the UFC’s loyalty to Chandler would ever prevent anyone from granting that wish.

Chandler tied all his hopes to one of this sport’s most mercurial superstars on an ongoing, open-ended basis, and he paid for it. He won’t ever get that time back. And as a fighter in his late-30s, time isn’t something he can easily afford to waste.