MMA Sucka published a report on Tuesday, Oct. 27, raising the possibility of King Green vs. Michael Chandler inside the Octagon. The outlet put a question mark at the end of its own headline, and that punctuation is doing real work. The UFC hasn’t announced anything. There is no date, no card and no venue tied to the pairing, so this belongs in the rumor pile for now. Nothing is booked.
The timing is very King Green. On Sunday night, Oct. 25, Green was streaming on social media while driving his custom Range Rover when a silver Jeep Compass turning left slammed into him, according to MMA Fighting’s Guilherme Cruz. Footage suggests Green ran a red light. Green saw it the other way and said on stream that he had the green and the other driver turned in front of him. His first words after impact were “We just got in a car accident,” followed by “Hopefully the people are okay.” He said the car was totaled, and his closing analysis on the whole thing amounted to a shrug and a reminder to the chat that these things happen.
The fight résumé matters more here than the auto insurance claim. Green is a 40-year-old UFC lightweight sitting at 36-18-1 after getting knocked out by Esteban Ribovics at UFC 332 earlier this month. Before that loss he’d strung together four straight wins, and three of those ended by stoppage. That’s 55 professional fights, which is a staggering amount of mileage for anybody, let alone a guy who just turned 40 and is fresh off getting finished.
What’s publicly out there on this report doesn’t spell out where Chandler stands right now, so I’m not going to fill that space with guesswork about his form or his record. What we can say is that Chandler’s name attached to Green’s is a matchup that sells itself to anyone who likes fights that don’t go to the scorecards. The question mark is the part to respect until the UFC confirms it.
No sportsbook has posted a line, which is the correct number of lines for a fight that might not exist. When one shows up, here’s what I’ll be looking at. Green’s knockout loss to Ribovics happened weeks ago, so a turnaround for his next fight could be quick, and I’m always wary of a 40-year-old coming straight back after getting stopped. His recent stoppage rate says he can still end fights. His age and the Ribovics result say fights can end on him too. That’s the kind of profile where I’d rather pay attention to the price than to the hype, because two action fighters getting matched up is exactly the setup that gets the public piling onto whichever name they like better. My plan is to sit on my hands, wait for the UFC to confirm a date and see whether the opening number gives Green any respect. Until then the only thing officially finished this week is the Range Rover.
