"They're gonna be so tired" - Undefeated UFC prospect weighs in on potential middleweight showdown between Conor McGregor and Michael Chandler
Undefeated UFC middleweight prospect Bo Nickal has thrown shade on the potential middleweight bout between Conor McGregor and Michael Chandler, raising concerns about the proposed 185-pound matchup.
McGregor, a former featherweight and lightweight champion, and Chandler, a former lightweight title contender, have both publicly agreed to fight at middleweight in June. However, the unusual weight class switch has drawn skepticism, with Nickal stating:
"At 185 lbs... They are going to be so tired."
Nickal's concern stems from the significant jump in size that both fighters would face. 'The Notorious' has only competed twice at welterweight, while Chandler, primarily a lightweight, has only briefly flirted with the 170-pound division.
Moving up to middleweight, where the average fighter weighs around 185 pounds, could push them beyond their natural physical limits, leading to fatigue and potentially impacting their performance.
Michael Chandler explains advantages over Conor McGregor in a potential middleweight bout
While both fighters have solely competed at welterweight or below, Michael Chandler believes his natural size and Conor McGregor's inactivity will give him the edge at 185 pounds.
In a recent YouTube video, Chandler dismissed concerns about the weight jump, stating:
"Cause to me, size does not equal an advantage. So if this fight gets booked at 185 [pounds], and I’m sitting at 190, I’m not gonna try get up to 210 and mess up my body weight. Because this is what I’ve always said about Conor – Conor’s comeback... 170 or 185 – the way I see it is, I’ve been competing at 155 for all these years, I’m definitely heavy for the weight class to get down to 155. And I am gonna be operating within the same kind of body composition as I normally do."
Chandler raised valid concerns about McGregor's adaptation to the new weight class, pointing out the challenges the Irish fighter might encounter in navigating the octagon with a different body composition:
"It’ll be three years by the time he gets back into the octagon and he is gonna have to navigate and negotiate how to do all of his moves, all of his techniques, navigate each exchange inside of the fight with a lot more muscle mass than he used to have, a bigger frame which probably means less cardio, more oxygen use... And him just trying to move and be the old Conor that we all loved back in 2016… So I don’t believe that size is an advantage."
Check out Michael Chandler's comments on Conor McGregor below (4:31):