Although Dustin
Poirier might have been well on his way to a second victory
over Conor
McGregor regardless, the lasting memory of their trilogy bout
at
UFC 264 will be the leg injury that ended the Irish superstar’s
night.
“The storyline is, oh, Conor broke his ankle instead of Dustin
looked good,” UFC president Dana White said at the UFC 264
post-fight press conference.
“It sucks,” White said. “It’s brutal. It’s not the way you want to
see fights end. Dustin
Poirier will fight for the title, and when Conor is healed and
ready to go, you do the rematch, I guess. I don’t know.”
Poirier defeated McGregor decisively in their rematch at UFC 257
and had referee Herb Dean
taking a close look at the proceedings with his ground-and-pound
barrage late in Round 1 on Saturday, but the nature of the ending
makes White believe a fourth bout is necessary.
“The fight didn’t get finished,” he said. “You can’t have a fight
finish that way, so we’ll see how this whole thing plays out. Who
knows how long Conor is out, so Poirier will do his thing until
Conor’s ready.”
Poirier let McGregor get back to his feet in the waning seconds of
the period, and the break occurred when “Notorious” stepped
awkwardly after missing a punch. According to White, it was hardly
a foregone conclusion that Poirier was on his way to victory.
“He got back up on his feet and started throwing punches,” White
said. “His ankle snapped from throwing punches. He was fighting
back. It wasn’t like he was up against the cage and defenseless and
was unloading on him.”
In the more immediate future, Poirier will have a date against
current 155-pound champion Charles
Oliveira. White didn’t have a timeline for Poirier vs. McGregor
4. Instead, it’s a fight the UFC boss will keep in his back pocket,
much like the anticipated McGregor-Nate Diaz
trilogy.
“The rematch is there,” he said. “You’ve got the rematch with him
like you’ve got the rematch with [Nate] Diaz. It’s always going to
be there. I don’t know what the landscape’s going to look like when
he’s ready, so to say definitively, I can’t, right here, right now.
But you always have that rematch.”
For Poirier, some of McGregor’s trash talk heading into UFC 264 –
and immediately after the bout — reached inappropriate levels, and
that’s why the American Top Team representative believes the rivals
will square off again in some shape or form.
“We are going to fight again whether it’s in the Octagon or on the
sidewalk,” Poirier said. You don’t say the stuff he said. … My wife
is solid as a rock. I’m not worried about that. That’s noise. He
was saying he was going to kill me. You don’t say stuff like that –
that he was going to murder me. You don’t say stuff like that. You
don’t say stuff about people’s wives either, but I know that that’s
zero-chance. There is a chance somebody could die. You don’t say
that. You don’t wish that on anybody.”