A year ago, when Michael Chandler lost his third fight in a row, he was shaken.
Before the losing streak began, he was undefeated and the Bellator lightweight champion. Then he lost his title to Eddie Alvarez. Seven months later, he went into the cage to fight Will Brooks for the interim lightweight title after Alvarez departed for the UFC. Chandler lost that fight by split decision. And then in November 2014, he lost to Brooks again, this time with a strange and confusing finish that left him wondering about his place in the sport, or if he even had a place at all.
"If you're a baseball player and in one game you go 0-for-4, you can come back the next day, go 4-for-4 and get instant gratification. But when you lose a fight, you’ve got three, four or more months before you can get that gratification. You get victories at the gym, but not the real ones," Chandler told Bleacher Report. "With the losses, it happened twice, and then a third time. It was like, holy cow. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t shake me."
Once one of Bellator's biggest stars, Chandler quickly fell off the map. He says there was a solid year where he barely had any media requests or received Twitter mentions from fans.
"America loves a winner, like Patton said," he said. "You kind of fade off into the abyss."
Chandler's life and support system begin with his family, who circled tightly around him. He realized how fleeting the fame could be. In mixed martial arts, as in other sports, you are defined by what you've done lately. Never mind the 12-0 record he possessed before the losses began to stack up; Chandler had lost three straight, and suddenly there was a whole lot less attention paid to him.
It was a time of learning and realization. Each day, Chandler says he wakes up wanting to be a better husband than he is a fighter, and he wants to be an even better father. And so he focused on that, embracing his family and friends, putting his bad run in the cage to the side.
"The belts, the money you make, the followers and fame—all that stuff passes, and you’re left with what you've created. If fighting ever got in the way of marriage, you’d see me sacrifice my career," Chandler said. "I have an amazing support system. You talk to them, surround yourself with them. They remind you how great life is."
Chandler was training at Alliance in San Diego, home of former bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz. He'd been there for a few years, but then coach Neil Melanson departed for a new job with the Blackzilians in Florida. Alliance no longer felt like a good fit, and Chandler started thinking about leaving. His choices were limited, he says, because his wife has a great job in San Diego and he wasn't going to uproot her just to move across the country for another gym.
Chandler shared a management team with Ryan Bader and others at the Power MMA gym in Arizona. He visited the gym, and it felt like a perfect fit. The gym had the mentality of a wrestling room, just grinding all day long, and that was something Chandler was used to. He decided to make the move.
He returned to the cage in June and finally got back on the winning track with a quick win over Derek Campos. This Friday, he faces David Rickels for a second time; he owns a 44-second knockout win over Rickels from 2013. If he keeps winning, Chandler knows he'll eventually find himself back in the cage with Brooks, a man whom he has quickly grown to dislike.
Chandler and Brooks are nothing alike, and perhaps that is the root of their problems. Brooks has been vocal in recent months, complaining that aging stars such as Tito Ortiz and Kimbo Slice are getting the lion's share of promotional efforts. He believes Bellator should focus on their younger, homegrown stars, a category he falls under.
Chandler, frankly, thinks Brooks should shut up.
"It’s embarrassing, honestly. It’s embarrassing to lose to a guy who has that much of a victim mentality. How does he go through the day? Maybe he isn’t being taken care of as the champion. But this world doesn’t owe you a thing when you don’t go out of your way to help promote," Chandler said.
"I've been with this company since 2010. I'm still one of the guys who goes out and helps promote. I've taken fights on short notice while injured to help save shows, and in return I've been taken care of. I get taken care of better than him because I have given more to this company."
The subject of Brooks fires Chandler up. Ask him a question about the current lightweight champion, and you can hear the fire spark up in his voice.
"Have you ever heard him open his mouth without saying something negative? He’s always whining. Nobody really wants to be around those people," he said. "America was built on hard work and not complaining about stupid junk. It goes against the way everyone wants to live their lives. Certain people find excuses and complain all the time, and people don’t really appreciate that."
It is clear Chandler welcomes an eventual third fight with Brooks. But he also has other plans too; he'd like to fight Josh Thomson, the former Strikeforce star who signed with Bellator earlier this year after departing the UFC.
And while he appreciates everything that former Bellator head Bjorn Rebney did to build up the company—from the early tournament days on ESPN Deportes and MTV 2 all the way to the sale to Viacom—Chandler is also thrilled with the things Scott Coker is doing to take the promotion to a new level. Bellator feels like it's becoming a legitimate competitor for the UFC, and Chandler is glad to be part of it.
"Scott has been in the MMA game for over a decade, and nobody says anything bad about him. Bellator Dynamite was awesome. Well, maybe not with Glory. But there are exciting things happen with the Asian market, with Fedor. That’s why you saw Phil Davis and Josh Thomson. And that’s why I’ve had conversations with other people who say they are testing the open market when their contract comes up."
Chandler says he'll try to get past Rickels, and then he'll see what the future holds. He'd love to fight Brooks and Thomson and anyone else who finds his way to his division. But he's not going to fight forever. He has multiple outside business interests, and he's constantly saving and trying to build a nest egg. He admires fighters such as Randy Couture who have fought well into their 40s, but that life is not for him. He wants to take as little damage as possible so that he can walk away at a fairly young age and still have enough brainpower to run his businesses and play with his kids.
"My nature is fast-paced and violent," he said. "I'm not trying to change that, but I am trying to settle in. I can’t take too much damage over a long period of time."
What he'd really like to be, in a perfect world, is the MMA version of Barry Sanders: an athlete who walked away at the top of his game simply because he could.
"I always thought I could run through a brick wall. But I'm in a great situation. I'm going to stash up my cash and invest in real estate. I want to be set up for the end of fighting," he said. "When I retire, I’m going to be in a good position and making more money outside of fighting than when I am in the sport. That should be every fighter's goal."
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