Much has been made of the known unknowns coming into the big UFC White House card on Sunday June 14th: whether it will rain, whether it will be blistering hot, and whether there’ll be a billion bugs.
Michael Chandler is prepared for all of it.
For years, Chandler has been preparing for a fight with Conor McGregor that never materialized. As something of a consolation prize, the UFC booked him instead on the UFC Freedom 250 card at the White House … against the extremely dangerous rising contender Mauricio
Ruffy.
“Iron Mike” is just 1-5 in his last six, but it isn’t for lack of hard training. As always, Chandler looks like he’s in peak condition, and a new training video shows how he’s been preparing for the wild Washington D.C. outdoors, complete with heat and bugs. After a series of sprints, Chandler approaches the camera with his chest and face covered in gnats.
“Ey, we’re ready for the bugs,” Chandler said before picking a bug off his nose and eating it. “Dana, you said there was gonna be bugs, dude? We need an exterminator out here. This is crazy. We came out here to acclimatize to the heat and got acclimated to the bugs … I didn’t notice them until halfway through and then I was like, ‘Oh there’s a few bugs here. I saw one on me and next time I looked down I had two hundred and fifty.”
“Well … we’re acclimated.”
Chandler will be able to handle sucking in a fruit fly or three if he needs to, but can he deal with his opponent Ruffy’s unorthodox and flashy style? The smart thing to try and do would be to go back to his wrestling roots and try to keep Ruffy on the canvas. But the Chandler that arrived in the UFC has been an entertainer first and competitor second, going toe to toe with his opponents even when it worked to his detriment.
Will that change as he faces the possibility of a fourth loss in a row and sixth loss in the UFC? Just like the bug question, we won’t know how things are going to look until the bell rings.
