Recovered and refocused: How Stipe Miocic and Michael Chandler made good use of their years between fights
A funny thing happened to Michael Chandler during his two years out of the cage leading up to Saturday night’s UFC 309 co-main event. While he was waiting around for Conor McGregor, watching the days slip by without a bout agreement or even a firm date in mind, he realized that something about his life had changed.
After fighting five times in less than two years, feeling like he was always either recovering from a fight or else in training camp preparing for the next one, suddenly he was experiencing something close to a normal life.
“Obviously you never want to talk about retirement because you want to be focused right now on winning a fight, but what it did do for over a year and a half was kind of give me a little insight and a glimpse into what life's going to be like after fighting,” Chandler said. “And you know something? I kind of enjoyed it. I know I'm going to enjoy it when it comes now.”
Former UFC heavyweight champion Stipe Miocic, who fights Jon Jones for the UFC heavyweight title in UFC 309's main event, had a similar revelation.
It’s been more than three years since the last time Miocic stepped in the cage. He stayed in the gym during his time away. He outfitted his own home gym with the best mats and punching bags he could find, giving him a place to get workouts in without ever being far from his family.
After transitioning from part-time to full-time work as a firefighter, he also had plenty of responsibilities to balance. What he discovered was that an extended break from life in the UFC wasn’t actually so bad.
“It’s been great, honestly,” Miocic said. “Just getting to hang out with my kids more, watching them get older. It’s really awesome. They come into the gym with me every once in a while, and obviously I’ve got the home gym here, but it’s been great. I love being a father and it’s given me more time for that.”
One of the many notable ways that professional fighting differs from other sports is the total lack of a built-in offseason. With no natural rhythm to the life, fighters are left to figure out for themselves when to work and when to rest.
But fighters also know how fleeting opportunity can be in this sport. You don’t earn money sitting on the couch, so the drive to cram in as many fights as possible into every calendar year pushes some to the point of exhaustion and beyond.
The UFC calendar can be relentless, which means the next training camp might have to start just weeks after the last fight. If you’re coming off a big win, you want to keep the momentum going. Even if you’re coming off a loss, there’s often a certain self-imposed pressure to get back in there and give the fans something better to remember you for.
The downside is that many fighters are back in the gym without ever fully healing. According to Alex Cooper, one of Miocic’s main coaches, that’s been the biggest difference in his training camp for this fight.
“Time out of the cage has been a good thing,” Cooper said. “Stipe was able to let his body fully heal from all the fights in a shorter amount of time from 2018 to 2021. That let us start the training camp at 100 percent rather than being somewhere less than that.”
The physical toll of a grueling pace in MMA is only part of the strain. Life in training camp can be an intensely myopic existence. You’re focused only on the fight to come. Every day you wake up, the only job you have is to prepare for that night. The morning after might as well not even exist.
You do that over and over, as Chandler did in the first two years after he signed with the UFC, and you pay a price. You also spend so much of your time getting in fight shape that it leaves relatively little chance for adding new weapons to the arsenal.
“The first 26 months of me signing with the UFC, I had six opportunities, six training camps,” Chandler said. “Obviously one was a backup fight for [Khabib Nurmagomedov vs. Justin Gaethje], so I didn't actually fight. So I had five fights, six training camps in a 26-month period. So that meant by the time I got done with one of those crazy fights, it would take me three, four, five weeks to actually get back on my feet to where I was able to train again. All of a sudden (UFC executive vice president Hunter Campbell) is calling me, (UFC CEO) Dana (White) is calling me, saying, ‘Hey, this is what we're thinking.’ And I never had time to actually put my foot on the brake, take a step back, and learn new things and actually improve as a fighter.”
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Physically, that took a toll on Chandler, he said. But it was more than just the wear and tear on his body.
“Mentally and spiritually, I’ve got to be honest with you, you feel it,” Chandler said. “Just because you love the sport doesn't mean that you aren’t ticked off at it sometimes, or that it never becomes a job. Then it starts to feel more and more labor-intensive because it's a constant grind. And that's really how I felt, honestly, going into that (Dustin) Poirier fight. Had the worst training camp of my life probably, and now I've had the best training camp of my life, and the big difference is that I feel refreshed. My eyes are open, my ears are open, and my heart is full.”
For Miocic, time away from active competition didn’t necessarily mean a total break from the sport. It definitely didn’t mean that he wasn’t thinking about Jones specifically.
Miocic said he first started game-planning for Jones some two and a half years ago. When the former light heavyweight champ announced his intention to go up in weight, Miocic was paying attention. A potential fight between them had been discussed several times before it was officially booked and then rebooked following Jones’ injury.
“Now we’re finally here,” Miocic said. “I’m just praying he’ll be there.”
According to both Miocic and his coach, the time off has given him a chance to sharpen old skills and add some new ones. Jones’ only fight at heavyweight — a submission win over Ciryl Gane in March 2023 — was over too quickly to provide much information on how Jones’ game will translate to the new weight class.
But if there’s one thing that’s been on Miocic’s mind as he’s taken time to rest and recover, it’s the question of how Jones’ chin will stand up to heavyweight punching power.
“Right now, I don’t know, but we’re going to find out,” Miocic said. “I’ll tell you this, I’m going to touch that chin a lot.”
