Issue 176

March 2019

Michael Chandler remains one of the most devastating fighters in the world at lightweight and a three-time Bellator champion. But now he is embracing a new challenge as he and his wife have adopted a child, Chandler opens up about how he intends to combine his two dramatically different roles.

The lightweight fighter Michael Chandler might be ranked at the No.12 mark in MMA’s independent pound-for-pound ratings but there are few fans who would doubt the devastation of his fighting skills. Chandler delivers. From his dangerous punching to his highly effective wrestling. Explosive, fast, thrilling. Chandler is all of those.

But his belief in his own fighting skills is matched just as keenly by his passion for giving. Last year, after losing the Bellator 155lb title in New York to Brent Primus, through an ankle injury during the fight, frustration brought about a renewed drive in him in the gym as he set about to regain the lightweight crown. With Primus in turn suffering an injury, Chandler had to wait 19 months to set the record straight.

But any frustration he might have felt during this period was completely erased by a life-changing dream being realized. Originally from Missouri, but now based in Nashville, Tennessee, Michael and his wife Brie have adopted an African-American child from Texas. It is a deeply moving story. A script born of a deep love and a couple with two beating hearts who seek to give in a way that cannot fail to inspire.

“Every single day I thank my wife for having this in her heart since she was 15 years old,” the 32-year-old Chandler explains. His words in this interview, and those of his wife, came from three separate meetings we had, one in Los Angeles and two in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The deep honesty of Chandler, the look in his eyes as he spoke about his adopted son needs underlining. It was a privilege to hear them from this man, and to hear how his wife loves and respects him. The fight game is an unforgiving landscape, but the joy that both these people expressed makes them special human beings.

“Brie has wanted to adopt since she was 15 years old,” Chandler reflects. “She used to donate her time to inner city missions. This thing called Granny’s House back in Colombia, Missouri. It was almost like a big brother, big sister thing. Just like taking kids to lunch, to the park – being a good mentor. A good light for young children who don’t have a good life, who don’t have books or clothes, holes in their shoes. She’s had it in her heart to adopt since she was a teenager.”

This is a fighter remember, a hard man who plies his trade sparring hard and pushing his body, and mind, to the limit. But who possesses a humanity that he showed so deeply after winning back the belt he considers part of what defines him. Consider what he said after his dominant victory in his second fight with Primus.

Chandler thanked his team. Henri Hooft has been a rock, and he spoke of the support of his wife, perhaps his most ardent supporter. “I’ve been able to make a great living for myself and my family fighting,” he acknowledges.

“It is a business, but it’s a people business and family business. I’ve always wanted to be a great employee and I’ll continue to be,” he explains, reflecting on his decade on the Bellator roster. There is a loyalty about Chandler that is rare in this unforgiving sport.

Before talking about his son, there is the triumph over Primus to assess. How does he rank this victory, 50-45 on all three judges' cards.

“It’s hard, I’ll have to look back on it. I don’t think it’s up there with those [wins over Eddie Alvarez or Patricky Freire]. I won a world title in the end. Not that the mystique ever goes away, but I’ve been in some big fights with some big names. Primus brought it. He was a champion trying like hell to defend his belt.”

Chandler had set about the rival who took his belt like a man possessed. The fingerprints of his coach Henri Hooft were there in the fight. “Sit back and enjoy him,” Hooft had told me at the workout the day before the fight.

“Henri Hooft got me so prepared when it comes to my hands and kicks,” Chandler says. “When you talk about preparation for a fight, I have never been so confident with my hands. I felt I could knock down a rhino if he walked in there.” And so it proved.

The fight over, Chandler was thinking of one thing. His son. His wife was with him. It was a balmy evening, 10pm in Honolulu. Chandler’s face was marked, scored, bruised and swollen from the 25-minute fight with Primus. Brie was waiting to the side when I asked him about returning home to his son.

“Right now, he doesn’t understand what’s going on. But someday he’ll look at my career, because it’s going to live on the internet. I’ve had the great opportunity to do some great things. My wife sent me a video of him earlier when I was in the back and I started tearing up. It is just crazy, because it’s not lip service.”

“I truly want him to believe in me and love the man I am and was, and someday he’ll be old enough to understand it. Every single moment, day, performance and interaction I get the opportunity to paint that picture. I’m excited to go back. He probably won’t know I’ve been in a fight. He’ll see my body and wonder what the heck is going on with daddy’s face.”

So the beast goes in the cupboard once home?

“Yeah, and that’s the craziest thing. I’ve gone so far on the spectrum of lover. I’ve turned into the biggest lover. My heart has grown tenfold as a father. But on the other end of the spectrum, there’s a nastier human being inside who is there when I step into that cage.

Finding that fine line between both, the greatest job and label I will ever have in my life is being a dad. It’s something I don’t take lightly and I’m extremely blessed to be his dad.”

The union is powerful between Michael and Brie. Less than an hour after the fighter reclaimed his Bellator crown, they are reunited. Brie is with Michael in his dressing room after the fight. We get a snatched view of them together, and I am allowed to travel back to the hotel with them in the same bus. Brie talks of her fighting husband so tenderly.

“We have a couple days here to ourselves,” explains Brie, an emergency medicine physician by trade. “So I’ll treat his little wounds. He wakes up and he’s ready to go. He doesn’t really require much catering to. I’ve gone part-time when he travels. I will go back to full-time now, because I love working. I love this part (after a fight) though. It’s like being on our honeymoon again. We talk about the highs and lows.”

Michael adds: “It’s like a brand new marriage again.”

Brie again: “Every moment before he fights, I feel pride for him. I see how hard he’s worked and get this sense of how much I love him. So then after a great victory like this, it is like a honeymoon stage because it’s just an incredible feeling in the build-up to the fight. Sacrifices are part of this. I knew what I was signing up for when I married him. It’s his career and he’s good at it and I support him every step of the way because he supports me in every endeavor I do. When he comes home, he is the best husband and father.”

Adopting a young child has made them grow even closer. The story of the adoption itself is staggeringly beautiful.

“When we got together it was something we kicked around,” recalls Michael. “A lot of thought, lot of prayer, lot of wise counsel. We realized it was something we wanted to do. It was a year-long process of fingerprinting, financial checks, medical checks. Criminal background history checks and all that stuff....”

You wonder what might have been said when they found out Michael was a ‘cage fighter’.

“Luckily you’re allowed to keep a lot of that stuff confidential,” he explains. “You need some things to be confidential between you and the birth mother, because you’re not sure who you will end up matching with.”

In October 2016, they signed up for active adoption. “At 1:40 in the afternoon we got an e-mail saying that we’re active. At 1:46pm we got a phone call saying congratulations you’re active and by the way there’s this case down in Dallas, Texas. Would you like to present? We told them to send a picture. They sent us a picture. His birth mom’s profile matched exactly our preferences, we matched hers.”

The rest really is history.

Chandler pauses. His face is beaming. His eyes are wet.

“I saw a picture of him on my computer screen and I immediately fell in love,” he remembers. “It was in October. October 26 we got custody of him. October 16 was when I saw his picture. Within ten days of seeing his picture, he was our son. He was nine months old. Truth be told, we were supposed to meet the birth mother, then meet him, then go back to the hotel and then the next day sign the custody papers. But some stuff happened and we didn’t actually see him, but we signed the papers for this child who we had never met, never seen, never touched, only seen one picture of. Now he’s our son forever. It was one of those leaps of faith, God said this was our son. It didn’t matter what happened between now and the rest of his life. We knew he was our son. We signed on the dotted line before we even met him.

“My eyes started tearing up,” he continues. “My heart felt like it was about to beat out of my chest and I said, ‘Babe, that’s my son’. Holding him in my arms, looking into his eyes and realizing that his whole future depends on how I care for him. How I take care of him, how I am a model for his behavior. Who knows what avenue of life he might choose, but everything, every single thing will be shaped by how I love him, how I serve him. How my wife and I parent him. It’s a whole new level of responsibility that I didn’t even know existed.”

The child had a name, Anthony, but they changed it to ‘Hap’.

“Hap is named after Hap Whitney, who is an old wrestling coach of mine who I wrestled with at the University of Missouri,” says Chandler. “There is actually a Hap Whitney award. We loved what it [the name] stood for. It stood for leadership, steadfastness. Being a man of good character and reputation. That’s what the award stood for. My wife loved the name, so we went with Hap.”

It is hard not to feel a profound, genuine admiration for the couple.

“It made sense to us,” reasons Chandler. “We just thought, ‘Let’s put on name in the hat and if it’s in the cards, it’s in the cards’. Six minutes later, it was in the cards. I am so thankful that it happened at the exact perfect timing. Two months earlier, two months later, we would not have ended up with Hap. Life has changed forever, for the better. Parenthood has a new meaning, fighting has a new meaning and it’s just awesome.”

The hard part, now, one imagines, must be being away in camp? Chandler nods.

“It’s like when you’re a little kid and you get a new toy that you want to play with,” he smiles. “Not to liken him to an object, but your heart is full and all you want to do is play with him. All I want to do is be his dad. All I want to do is be with my wife and be with him, enjoying him.”

“Thank God, I’ve been blessed with the ability to compartmentalize things,” he continues. “God put me on this earth to be a husband and father to him, but I can only continue to do that if I pursue my calling. Continue to use these gifts that I’ve been given. It was tough, but thank God for modern technology. Skype and all these things. I’m able to go home for four of the eight weekends of camp, so it’s been an easy transition and I cannot wait to go squeeze him when I’m done.”

There’s another message here, that perhaps we should love people regardless of race. Does Chandler see it like this?

“It’s seen differently from the outside and from my perspective,” he muses. “I know that because so many people point out how great a thing it was to do. But I just look at it as what we were called to do, what was in our hearts. For me, there is a new-found outlook on life. When I take my son and he has a different skin color than I do - who knows he may end up being 6’4’’ and 280 pounds – and he’s black. So he’s going to look different than I am. We’re going to look different.”

Then comes the beauty of Chandler, and the honesty and wisdom of this human being.

“But I’m not his white father, I’m his father. He’s not my African-American son, he’s my son. He is going to grow up wanting to be just like me. He’ll want to dress like I do, act like I act, pray how I pray, and love how I love. At the end of the day, my heart will be transferred into his heart. Whether he’s black or white or Asian. We’re really just human beings on this earth and this is something we were led to. And I thank God that he chose us.”

Amazing. On every level.