{"id":706792,"date":"2026-05-31T18:55:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T18:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/706792\/"},"modified":"2026-05-31T18:55:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T18:55:08","slug":"bug-covered-michael-chandler-ready-for-ufc-white-house-were-acclimated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/706792\/","title":{"rendered":"Bug-covered Michael Chandler ready for UFC White House: \u2018We\u2019re acclimated\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u2019ll be a billion bugs.<\/a><\/p>\n

Michael Chandler is prepared for all of it.<\/p>\n

For years, Chandler has been preparing for a fight with Conor McGregor that never materialized.<\/a> As something of a consolation prize, the UFC booked him instead on the UFC Freedom 250 card at the White House \u2026 against the extremely dangerous<\/a> rising contender Mauricio Ruffy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIron Mike\u201d is just 1-5 in his last six, but it isn\u2019t for lack of hard training. As always, Chandler looks like he\u2019s in peak condition, and a new training video shows how he\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cEy, we\u2019re ready for the bugs,\u201d Chandler said before picking a bug off his nose and eating it. \u201cDana, 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 \u2026 I didn\u2019t notice them until halfway through and then I was like, \u2018Oh there\u2019s a few bugs here. I saw one on me and next time I looked down I had two hundred and fifty.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell \u2026 we\u2019re acclimated.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s unorthodox and flashy style?<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t know how things are going to look until the bell rings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Much has been made of the known unknowns coming into the big UFC White House card on Sunday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":706793,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85,1396,125620],"class_list":["post-706792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-news","tag-ufc-white-house-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706792","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=706792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/706793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=706792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=706792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=706792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}