While Michael Chandler hasn’t decided what’s next for him yet, he knows which fight excites him the most.
Former three-time Bellator lightweight champion Chandler (21-5 MMA, 18-5 BMMA) entered free-agency after back-to-back first-round knockouts of Sidney Outlaw and Benson Henderson, and wants to test his worth on the open market.
While he is not ruling out a potential re-signing with Bellator, Chandler is open to signing with all major promotions. But the one potential fight that seems to excite him the most is a tussle with UFC interim lightweight champion Justin Gaethje, who is scheduled to face undisputed champion Khabib Nurmagomedov in a title unification bout at UFC 254.
With Gaethje’s aggressive style and willingness to engage in wild, crowd-pleasing matchups, Chandler thinks the stylistic matchup between the pair would undoubtedly deliver for the fans.
“That’s my favorite fight,” Chandler told MMA Junkie. “That one right there, because we’re gonna run sprints. I will have never sprinted towards anybody so fast in my entire life than I would Justin Gaethje. We’d meet right in the middle, we’d fight fire with fire. As he said, I love what he said because I was actually a fan of what he said, he said, ‘I want to go out there when I fight Khabib and create car crashes, I want to step in that cage and every single exchange is another car crash and we’re gonna find out who the better crash dummy is, who the tougher man, who’s the guy that’s willing to dig deeper.’
“I think that is me. I think I’ve always been a better competitor than him. I was in wrestling, I am in mixed martial arts, I’m a fan of his style. I’m even a fan of him cleaning up his style a little bit and being a little bit more technical and diplomatic with his style. So I think the last Justin Gaethje that we saw against Tony Ferguson was the best Justin Gaethje we’ve ever seen, and I would love to face that Justin Gaethje, and I would love to mix it up (with) him.”
Having engaged in a fair share of wars himself, most notably in his two battles against Eddie Alvarez, Chandler is confident that he’d be able to drag Gaethje (22-2 MMA, 5-2 UFC) into deep waters and outlast him.
“That one right there I think would be, if I did finish him, would be late, late in the fifth, just like Eddie did,” Chandler said. “I believe it was Eddie, finished him late in the third or late in the fifth because Justin Gaethje does not go down quick. But that right there would probably be the most exciting fight in the entire lightweight division. That right there, Chandler vs. Gaethje, may be the greatest fight, the most exciting fight, that MMA fans have ever seen. Better than my fights with Eddie Alvarez, better than all the other fights that are in your top five. Chandler vs. Gaethje is the most exciting mixed martial arts fight of all time.”
Michael Chandler says bout with Justin Gaethje would be 'the most exciting MMA fight of all time'
