Nobody it seems, including McGregor himself, has any idea what Conor's relationship with UFC is. Of course this could all just be for show as far as publicity is concerned and we all know how good Conor is at that.
Michael Chandler was the last person that "The Notorious One" was meant to face but that all fell apart due to a purported broken toe on McGregor. A convenient story that I do not believe to this day. I think that there is a lot more at play here including potential doping as well as Conor just being rather problematic to work with because he has such a huge amount of arrogance.
Chandler has been waiting for a while to see if things would change as far as Conor was concerned but he finally got tired of the wait and has moved on and agreed to instead fight Charles Oliviera in a rematch of sorts that cost him the belt a while ago.
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When Chandler was acquired from Bellator, he looked at first as though he was just going to tear through the entire UFC roster and I am sure he would have really enjoyed to have finally done that. It was on the date that he was hoping to claim the title that Charles got in his way and ruined all of his progress.
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Chandler believes that it was just a few very small mistakes that lead to him not ending up being the middleweight champion and in a lot of ways he is very correct about that. This rematch is not for a belt because Oliviera doesn't have the belt. What it is though, is a good setup that a lot of fans are going to be interested in because if Chandler can pull out an impressive victory, he will be back in the championship picture. He is also going to finally get a payday. This payday will be substantially lower than if he was fighting McGregor of course, but it is still going to be really high because the hype surrounding both Oliviera and Chandler is pretty fantastic even though both of them are respectful towards their opponents.
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This is something that I think the fans enjoy seeing because even though Conor has acquired a great deal of success by being an absolute jerk at these weigh-ins, conferences, and especially on Twitter, he often took it to far and people got fed up with it. For me, I don't mind the fighters being confident in their abilities but this idea that they are just going to tear through anyone that is put in front of them has been proven wrong many times. Just for McGregor for example: Anyone remember Nate Diaz and Dustin Poirier? How did that work out for him after months of trash-talking?
Chandler are Oliviera are a different kind of fighter and they let their hands and legs do the talking inside the octagon. I prefer this.
Still though, McGregor, despite claiming that he is "out of the loop" as far as his schedule with UFC is, still finds time to trash-talk Chandler and even accuse Michael of ducking the fight earlier this year. Chandler gets roped in a little bit but still keeps his cool and finds time to hit back with some light-hearted and at least as far as the press is concerned, kind of true statements about McGregor.
"If Conor can finally get his house in order, if he can finally string together a couple of sober days, string together a couple of days where he's actually training and actually feeling good, and he can actually finally, finally make good on his promise of the greatest comeback in combat sports history, if he can finally pony up, then I will fight Conor after I dispatch of Charles Oliviera.
Well I believe that everyone in the MMA world would like to see that happen. First though, you gotta get past Charles and this is no small task that he will have to manage in November of this year.