Issue 189

March 2020

Michael Chandler has been mixing it with the best for over a decade, but changes in his personal life have given him a fresh perspective and a fiercely renewed ambition.

Michael Chandler had a challenging 2019 that saw him lose his Bellator lightweight title in May before then ending the year on a high with a win at Bellator’s first-ever event on Japanese soil.

The NCAA Division I All-American went into his fight with Patricio “Pitbull” Freire at Bellator 221 riding a three-fight win streak and having regained his Bellator 155-pounds title from Brent Primus just six months earlier in Honolulu, Hawaii. Having beaten his older brother Patricky “Pitbull” twice earlier in his career, many had Chandler as a firm favorite but on fight night it was the Bellator featherweight champion Patricio who ended the evening with two Bellator titles over his shoulders.

Losing the Bellator lightweight strap for the third time in his career was a devastating blow for the 33-year-old, but come December he was given the opportunity of another high-profile bout on Bellator and RIZIN’s co-promoted card in Saitama, Japan. Having fought 23 times in the United States and just once in Canada previously, heading to the other side of the world to fight on a history-making fight card in the Far East was an opportunity Chandler didn’t want to let slip through his fingers.

Chandler was originally scheduled to face Benson Henderson in a rematch of their November 2016 fight which Chandler won via split decision. However, days before the fight Henderson pulled out of the contest and was replaced by Sidney Outlaw in a bout contested at 160 pounds. Despite all the distractions Chandler put on a spectacular performance and finished Outlaw inside three minutes after knocking him down and then finishing him with strikes on the mat.

The victory in Japan was the 20th of Chandler’s career and speaking exclusively to Fighters Only recently he explained why it was so special.

“It was so awesome and nothing I’d experienced before,” Chandler explained. “I’d always talk about fighting at Madison Square Garden or fighting on the same card as the likes of Chael [Sonnen], Fedor [Emelianenko], Kimbo Slice, fighting Eddie [Alvarez] on pay-per-view as some of the most special moments in my career, but to fight at the Saitama Super Arena was just something else. When you’re a bright-eyed kid, young in your career, you want to be in big fights, making big money, fighting in the big arenas. Fighting in Japan and fighting in an arena like that with all its deep-rooted tradition, it doesn’t get better than that.”

“The people were just incredible,” he continued. “The fans couldn’t have been any more awesome and I’ve never felt so loved in a foreign country or during a fight week. I took hundreds and hundreds of photos and autographs with fans and I was even given 25 different gifts. I was given sweets, drawings and even some guy who took a photo with me early in the week, he found me again a few days later in the hotel and printed out the photo we took together and gave me a copy. I just felt like a real superstar there and it helped me feel settled for the fight.”

With Henderson pulling out just two weeks before the fight Chandler would have been well within his rights to sit on the sidelines and request a full training camp to prepare for a different opponent. That was never a thought that crossed his mind though and he explained how, as his career has progressed why the man standing across the cage from him has become increasingly irrelevant.

“When Benson pulled out, Scott reassured me that they would keep me on the card and find a replacement,” Chandler said. “I’m not that bothered about whether we rebook that fight if I’m totally honest. The longer I’m in the sport I realize the opponents and last-minute changes don’t matter that much. I just know that I need to go in there and perform at the level I know that I’m able to perform at. I believe I did that against Sidney Outlaw in Japan and I felt great. Honestly, I felt the best I’ve ever felt in my career from a cognitive and physical standpoint. I truly believe that I’m just getting better. Thinking about opponents and things that are out of my control isn’t in my wheelhouse right now.”

After losing his title to Freire last May, Chandler made several changes in his personal life. As a new business owner and with a growing family back home, Chandler understood that he needed to bring a sense of stability back to a life that had changed a lot, albeit for the better, in the past two years. 

“One of the first things I did was bring on a partner for the gym I own here in Nashville, Tennessee,” Chandler said. “It’s a multi-sport facility where we do MMA, group fitness, CrossFit and personal training and it was a huge undertaking at the time, especially as my wife and I adopted our son during that period. We had a lot of crazy life changes in the past few years including moving across the country and building our house. In that 2018-19 period, we probably had more life changes than most people make in ten years. Truthfully, I found the woman of my dreams who is the perfect match for the crazy lifestyle we both have. She’s also a really hard worker as I am so together we thrive in the chaos and the opportunity.”

Whilst it’s often the case for a fighter to study what went wrong from a technical perspective following a loss, Chandler went down a very different route. The former Bellator lightweight champion realized that putting things right wasn’t just a matter of his actions, but more about what was happening inside his mind and making sure that he was operating at his highest cognitive level.

“I hired a mental coach and made sure that I checked what was going on between my ears and in my brain,” Chandler said. “I had to check who I was and what my purpose was on this earth. That was an awesome experience and I still work with him today. I spent less time in the gym than I ever have, but I spent more time offloading business responsibilities, focusing on my marriage, and following through on the promise I made to her on our wedding day to make her the happiest woman on earth.

“Hiring the mindset coach helped remind me ‘Who is Michael Chandler?,’ ‘What do I believe in?’ and ‘How am I going to take this setback and make it a springboard into the next chapter of my career?’” he continued. “I truly believe talking through it all helped me turn up at the Saitama Super Arena the best version of myself that I have been. As I said, I spent the least amount of time I’ve ever spent training in the gym between fights and instead focused on my mentality. The fact I came out smelling of roses on the other side shows how much this sport is about internal, emotional and spiritual growth rather than physical growth. We’re all tough, we’re all fast, we’re all strong, and we’re all athletic. It’s the battle between the ears – that is what is going to get your hand raised.”

The likes of Tom Brady, Roger Federer and Michael Jordan are examples of top sportsmen who have been open about using sports psychologists, but the number of MMA fighters promoting their use is few and far between. Chandler believes mental health is a topic that too many fighters ignore and that it is something of a taboo subject given the nature of the sport. 

“I think admitting you’re going to talk to a mental coach is kind of stigmatized in our sport,” Chandler said. “I think it’s true that males of the world today are too afraid to ask for help. We are too afraid to admit that we need help and that we are flawed individuals who have deficiencies. We all have doubts, shortcomings, insecurities, and fears, but a lot of it is driven by ego and driven by the belief that we should all be this tough man, be braggadocios, be a knight in shining armor, and have a bulletproof persona that we should portray to the world.

“The thing is, the strongest men in the entire world in history are the ones who have sorted out ways to grow. Whether that be admitting their fears, or their flaws, or just admitting they need help. I’ve been extremely blessed to have the right people around me from day one and God has put the right people in my life at the right time. I’m always constantly just praying for that, that I can meet the right people and that together we can have a good impact on the world. That’s kind of what I’ve done from the beginning.”

A large part of Chandler sorting out his mental approach was understanding who he wanted to be as a human being and how he wanted to go about achieving that. After being introduced to mental coach, Jim Hensel through fellow CrossFit fanatic, Rich Froning, Chandler began to understand his strengths and how he could improve on his shortcomings.

“We always talk about ‘Be vs. Do,’” Chandler explained. “My ‘Do’ is fighting, fitness, and being a tough dude who can step into a cage, get into a fistfight in an entertaining fashion, and show people that hard work in the gym, strict supplementation, strict sleeping habits, strict eating is the life of a champion. That’s what I was put on this earth for and that’s the shiny object people see on the surface. People watch my fights, watch my workout videos and follow me because I give value to them in the fitness and MMA realm.

“My ‘Be’ is who am I inside, what I stand for, and what am, my values,” he continued. “It’s about understanding what beliefs I won’t back down for and who are the people in my life I would take a bullet for? 

“Part of understanding that is realizing what doubts, insecurities, and what stuff from my upbringing and past is holding me back?” he adds. “I know what those things are now and I dealt with them in the past in my wrestling career when I should have been the national champion. I shouldn’t have lost half the fights I’ve lost in the sport, but I know I lost because of X, Y, and Z. I’m a flawed man that has so much left to accomplish and so much left to do.”

With his career spanning back as far as August 2009, Chandler has seen and accomplished more than most other fighters could ever dream of. Despite having 25 fights, three world titles, and having fought on some of Bellator’s biggest fight cards of all time, Chandler is still setting big goals for the year ahead and the rest of his career.

“I’ve been in this sport for so long now, ten years, and I realize that in itself is no small feat,” Chandler said. “So many guys and girls were supposed to come up and be the next big thing but it never happened for them because of reasons like injuries, bad luck, losses, or whatever. I realize I’ve been blessed to have what I’ve had in my career so far. Yes, I’ve trained hard and had the right people come into my life, but I truly believe I’m blessed. I still wake up every single morning excited to do what I do.

“I’ve created some big goals for the second half of my career and they revolve around continuing to build the platform that I have and inspiring young athletes and young people,” he continued. “I want to win more world titles and I want to get back to being that carefree somewhat crazy Michael Chandler of old and I think everyone got a glimpse of that in Japan last December. It’s going to be a huge year for me.”

At the age of 33, some would say the best years of Chandler’s career are behind him but this is something he vehemently refutes. As an avid fitness junkie, Chandler has no offseason and remains in peak condition whether in fight camp or not. With personal life rebalanced, he now believes he’s given himself a new lease of life and that he’s in the best condition he’s been in for years.

“I was calculated, nasty and ready for war,” Chandler said of his performance in Japan. “I know it’s a cliché, but I was in the best shape of my life. I’m getting better as I get older. Lots of people say that’s not possible and that as you get older things like your metabolism begin to fail you. I don’t think that’s true to the extent they say. Research shows that your metabolism doesn’t diminish as much as they think it does. I think that’s just a crutch that people use to find easy ways out and a way to not do as much. I think it’s down to a lack of sleep, high levels of stress, having to look after kids. I noticed that over the past few years when I’ve been stretching myself so thin, sleeping so little, and putting so much pressure on myself outside of my fight career that it was affecting my performances in the gym and on my home life. Now I’ve found that rebalance it’s like I have a new lease of life and a new appetite to not just better myself, but also tap into the potential that I have.”

Chandler’s contract situation has always been a hot topic given his attractiveness to other promotions. For the minute at least, Chandler appears to be very happy with life in Bellator but admits that with contract negotiations looming, there’s always the possibility he could test the waters of free agency..

“I think I’ll fight sometime soon in the late spring, early summer timeframe,” Chandler said. “Two big fights this year would be ideal and I’ve got one fight left on my current contract with Bellator. We have already been in contact with them and I’d be delighted and extremely happy if I end my fighting career with Bellator. We will see if we can come together and come to an agreement that both sides are happy with. I think it goes without saying that I’ve been one of the reasons why Bellator has been able to grow as much as it has. There’s a little bit of uncertainty, but it’s all exciting.”

“We always talk to Bellator first and we’ve never even got to free agency,” he added. “There’s never been a reason for me to do otherwise. Both Bjorn Rebney and Scott Coker have always presented me and my team with a great deal so I’ve no reason to think why we can’t do that again. That’s the deal. We usually start talking with one fight left so I’m excited to talk to them.”

As Chandler strides into a new decade with all possibilities open, one fight everybody in the MMA community would love to see is a trilogy showdown with his greatest rival, Eddie Alvarez. The two currently reside in different promotions with Alvarez now under the ONE Championship banner, but Chandler believes there will be a way to get the fight made and that his career won’t be truly complete until they share the cage for a third and final time.

“I wouldn’t have had any of the success I’ve had if I hadn’t been given the opportunity to enter that Bellator tournament, fight three times in as many months, and then be the unknown kid to take on the No. 3 fighter in the world, Eddie Alvarez,” Chandler said. “We had that ‘Fight of the Year’ and then another amazing split-decision fight two years later. There’s no doubt that Eddie Alvarez is the greatest dance partner I’ll ever have. Fighting each other was good for both of our careers. My career will never be fulfilled without us finishing that trilogy fight. Finishing that trilogy with Eddie Alvarez needs to happen. It could be the greatest trilogy in MMA history.”