Chael Sonnen doesn’t feel like Conor McGregor is getting the respect that he deserves from UFC fans.
After suffering a devastating leg break in his last outing at UFC 264 in July 2021, the Irishman has faced a long road back. It now appears as though he’s reaching the end of that journey as McGregor recently revealed that he will make his return to the Octagon this summer against former Bellator MMA champion ‘Iron’ Michael Chandler.
Of course, some are still skeptical — an understandable reaction considering we’ve been hearing about McGregor’s quote-unquote “greatest comeback in combat sports history” for the better part of a year.
Diving deep into McGregor’s devastating injury and impending return, Chael Sonnen suggested that McGregor rarely receives the same support from fans that fighters like Andeson Silva and Chris Weidman received when they suffered similar injuries in their UFC careers. Sonnen believes much of that is due to McGregor’s larger-than-life persona which makes people forget that at the end of the day, he’s still just a human being.
“I feel like Conor doesn’t get much grace around here,” Sonnen said during a recent episode of Good Guy/Bad Guy with Daniel Cormier. “I feel like Conor, because of the interviews and his presence, we forget that he’s a human being who was broken in half. Who’s getting back up, and I know guys who think they’re fighters, but really they just know aggression. They take someone down and beat them up. That’s aggression. A fighter gets back up when it’s hard and that’s what Conor McGregor is proving to be and he deserves credit for that.”
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Is Conor McGregor Really Going to Fight This Summer? Chael Sonnen and ‘DC’ Aren’t So Sure
Though no official announcements have been made by the UFC, McGregor has told both ESPN’s Marc Raimondi and MMA Hour host Ariel Helwani that he would compete this summer. However, Sonnen was quick to point out that McGregor never once claimed to have spoken to Dana White directly, which has led the former three-time UFC title challenger to approach the Irishman’s announcement with cautious optimism.
“I believe him in this one, but it was secondhand, just to remind you, what he just said, that his team got a call from an agent,” Sonnen said. “He did not say, ‘I spoke to Dana’ just for example, so we do have a little bit of miscommunication.”
It is for that reason that Daniel Cormier is choosing to reserve his excitement over McGregor’s recent reveal.
“And that right there, that right there Chael is why I still hold my excitement back,’ Cormier added. “If Conor McGregor really wants to fight, Conor McGregor can just call Dana and go, ‘Hey, I’m in, June, International Fight Week, book me and Chandler, I’m down.’ He has that ability, to reach out to the boss directly, but instead he’s going through the team, that’s why I’m skeptical.”
Watch the full episode below:
