UFC commentator Jon Anik expresses optimism that Conor McGregor may fight Michael Chandler within the next nine months despite recent allegations and a leg injury.
While there is considerable doubt surrounding the return of Conor McGregor, UFC commentator Jon Anik holds out hope the former two-division champion will fight Michael Chandler within the next nine months. McGregor, a coach opposite Chandler on Season 31 of The Ultimate Fighter, has found his way back into the headlines for a sexual assault allegation stemming from Game 4 of the NBA Finals in Miami. McGregor and his legal team have vehemently denied the allegations, and the alleged incident is still being investigated.
Despite the headlines, Anik is cautiously optimistic. “If you had asked me 48 hours [before this] Miami allegation came out, maybe I would be more ambitious, but I’m still pretty bullish that we’re going to see him no later than the first quarter of 2024,” Anik said. “I still believe, competitively, Conor McGregor will be back and hopefully that will allow him to get in an active competition cycle.
“But I gotta say, man, had this dude not broken his leg in 2021. I do believe in my core that everything would be different, right? I understand that he has more money than he ever thought he would, but he wants to be competing in the UFC, and that broken leg was a significant setback, and say what you want about how he’s gone about repairing it, and I think there is a lot of misinformation out there that we need to sift through, but that was a huge setback, right? And Chris Weidman is still not back [from his broken leg], you know what I mean? Thankfully, he’s going to come back, but I just think that without that circumstance, we would’ve seen Conor McGregor a lot sooner.” McGregor suffered the leg injury during his first-round TKO loss to Dustin Poirier at UFC 264 in July 2021. On top of the allegations against him, McGregor’s status in the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s testing pool is unknown, and that casts a shadow over the potential battle with Chandler. Earlier this week, Chandler expressed doubt about the booking.
Anik certainly understands Chandler’s concern but it’s his hope the former Bellator champion and the former two-division UFC champion can lock horns before the end of the year. “I’m still holding on to some optimism that we do see him at that final pay-per-view of the year,” Anik said. “There are exceptions that can be made, I believe, as far as USADA as far as expediting that calendar a little bit, but obviously we’re in a news cycle right now where we don’t know exactly what’s gonna happen in terms of some of these allegations in Miami and that casts another shadow over this possible return. “I think if you’re Michael Chandler even right now, sitting here mid-June reading headlines, you’re probably a little bit less ambitious than you were even [a week ago], but I do believe we’ll see Conor back, and hopefully not just one time, [but] two or three times in a row.”