09 February 2023 , 08:52
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Conor McGregor will have to make a huge 40lb weight cut in order to return at lightweight for his comeback fight with Michael Chandler later this year.
The legendary former two-weight champion announced his return to the UFC last weekend when it was confirmed he would face Chandler as a coach on season 31 of The Ultimate Fighter, with the pair to fight at the end of the series. It was expected the pair would move up from lightweight for the bout, but promotional boss Dana White has said that is not the case.
McGregor has been out of action since July of 2021, when he suffered a broken leg in the first round of his trilogy bout with Dustin Poirier. Since then, he has taken on a massive bulk and is now over 195lb with most of that weight being muscle in an effort to prepare for a move up to welterweight.
However, when White was asked by Pat McAfee during the former NFL star's Super Bowl week show if the bout would be at lightweight, he responded: "Yeah" before admitting: “I don’t know," when asked if the winner will challenge for the lightweight title after the long-awaited fight.
"What we do with that is, like when everyone was talking about when Conor comes back who’s he going to fight, you got to look at the landscape, who’s already got fights, who doesn’t. The Chandler fight is a fight people love. That fight is going to be absolutely violence.
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"Conor and I have a great relationship, we're on great terms. Listen, Conor would be perfect if he would just show up to places on time. Conor shows up when he wants to show up but other than that the kid's awesome. Smart guy, he knows business and he's fun to deal with and his fights are incredible.
"They're fun to watch and fun to be a part of. I do [think there's going to be a respect between McGregor and Chandler] and Chandler is a really good person too. He's a great guy to work with, I love that kid."
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White also teased that the bout would take place at either Madison Square Garden or a venue in Las Vegas. He was keen when the pandemic ended that the UFC go to host states where coronavirus protocols wouldn't be as stringent, and could end up returning to Texas to put the fight on at the 100,000 capacity Dallas Cowboys Stadium.
"We don't have any of the venues, date, locations or anything like that," he explained. "If you look at Covid and what went on during covid [since the end of the pandemic] we've been hitting the same spots. I was going to places where there wasn't going to be any bulls*** and I wasn't going to have to deal with anything.
"So now, we're at a point where all of these venues want us back and we've got to get back there and start. We're going to Miami for the first time in 20 years, that's going to be a big one. I don't know where the fight will be, but it will be wherever we can do the biggest gate, it wouldn't be a stadium, you'd do MSG, Vegas.
"We've always wanted to do Dallas Cowboys Stadium, so who knows? That could be a player for the Conor fight. You never know, we'll see how that plays out."