Conor McGregor is back in the gym training for a comeback fight, and he wants it to be at the White House against Michael Chandler.<\/p>\n
What \u201cThe Notorious\u201d wants isn\u2019t really news \u2014 McGregor has been talking about fighting<\/a> at the June UFC White House card<\/a> since U.S. president Donald Trump announced it over 4th of July weekend. But now we have Conor\u2019s longtime coach and friend John Kavanagh confirming that the Mac is already at the gym preparing for the date.<\/p>\n \u201cUs, on on our end, we\u2019re 100% in,\u201d Kavanagh told Ariel Helwani. \u201cHe\u2019s asked me to basically lay out a program between now and June of how we\u2019ll ramp up our training. He\u2019s showing up again. He\u2019s back in the gym most mornings, early. And he\u2019s just having fun with it. I got a bunch of messages after [UFC 322] on Saturday night. He wants to fight everybody. But certainly, he wants to get on that [White House] card.\u201d<\/p>\n McGregor hasn\u2019t fought since breaking his leg badly against Dustin Poirier in 2021. He was set to fight Chandler at UFC 303 in June 2024 but a broken toe<\/a> derailed that one, and then the ever-distractible Irish sports star spent the next year gearing up for an Irish presidential run that never got going.<\/a><\/p>\n There\u2019s always been questions surrounding how serious he is about putting in the hard work for a UFC comeback \u2026 and whether the UFC is really eager to book the last two fights<\/a> on his current contract. McGregor gates are some of the biggest gates in combat sports, so will TKO let him fight at the White House where less than 5000 can watch? Especially with McGregor asking for $100 million?<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cHow it works from a management point of view, I don\u2019t really get involved in that,\u201d Kavanagh said. \u201cBut from a training point of view, he\u2019s already tasked me with putting together a team of suitable training partners. We\u2019ll do some of it in the gym, some of it in his house. So he\u2019s fully locked in that we\u2019re gonna be making the walk in six, seven months.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf it\u2019s Conor\u2019s choice, he\u2019s in. I don\u2019t know how it\u2019ll work with the UFC. I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cChandler\u2019s not being quiet about wanting to be that guy,\u201d he said. \u201cI think I think the match-up makes sense. I think it\u2019d be a fun one. I think they have a bit of a spark between them. They\u2019ve done some stuff together before. It\u2019d be a fun fight week, press conference, all of that. Style wise, that kinda shorter, stocky wrestler? He\u2019s faced a few of those in his in his day.\u201d<\/p>\n So what\u2019s different about this situation versus all the other situations where McGregor has seemed tuned in to getting a fight? We\u2019re approaching \u2018Charlie Brown with the football\u2019 levels when it comes to Mac comeback talk, but Kavanagh sees something new<\/a> in his star pupil these days.<\/p>\n \u201cHe had a bit of a kind of a spiritual awakening, a bit of a journey,\u201d Kavanagh claimed. \u201cAnd it\u2019s a bit of a different vibe with him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Conor McGregor is back in the gym training for a comeback fight, and he wants it to be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85,1396],"class_list":{"0":"post-292563","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-mma","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}