What happened to the Conor McGregor fight?

For those excited and expecting to tune into UFC 303 to watch the return of Conor McGregor, you will have to wait even longer to witness the return of the Mac. Due to an undisclosed injury suffered late into his training camp, McGregor was forced to pull out from his highly anticipated return fight against Michael Chandler on Saturday, June 29. While there is no definitive answer on the exact injury, the word is that it is "not severe" and McGregor will be ready to go by late summer or early fall of this year.

It would not have been a McGregor fight build without drama and a bit of uncertainty. After three years away from the sport, McGregor fans finally had a glimmer of hope that the sport's brightest star would return during the biggest fight weekend of the year, International Fight Week. McGregor had finally put pen to paper and committed to taking on his most recent adversary.

The story between these two began last year when the two mixed martial artists signed on to be opposing coaches on The Ultimate Fighter, in what fans initially believed was the starting point of a slow build to McGregor's return bout. The TUF season came and went with mixed reviews and without any signs of an official date in sight.

The injury that forced Conor McGregor out of his fight has not yet been revealed

After months of fan speculation, the back-and-forth banter between the fighters finally came to a head. During the peak of the conflict, we saw an unofficial but elegant and meme-worthy wine-tasting announcement and then had an electric WWE Monday Night Raw call-out. After all the speculations, and all the call-outs, the fight had seemingly come to fruition with an agreed-upon date.

With the fight date finally signed, a press conference between the two combatants was scheduled for June 3 in Dublin. Just hours before the planned event, the UFC announced the press conference had been canceled, without an explanation. The MMA community was sent into a frenzy, as many at the time expected the inevitable cancelation of the bout, but just had no definitive reason as to why. After the press conference cancelation, the fight was believed to be in jeopardy. However, in the days following, there was what seemed to be a sense of reassurance from all parties that something was up but the fight was still taking place. 10 days after the canceled press conference, the fight was officially called off.

Although McGregor has been known to push through injuries to get to fight night in the past, this one seemed to be too risky for the fighter, his team, and the UFC to chance. While the target time frame of this fight is hoped to be in the not-too-distant future, as we have learned, we always need to expect the unexpected in the fight game.