After five minutes in the Octagon with Charles
Oliveira in the UFC
269 main event, Dustin
Poirier liked his chances.
“I felt good,” Poirier said at Saturday’s post-fight press
conference. “After the first round sitting on my stool going into
the second, [I’m] drinking water and thinking ‘I’m gonna be the
world champion tonight.’ It’s such a crazy thing that we do.”
Poirier flashed his power in Round 1, dropping Oliveira while
landing a whopping 54 significant strikes in the frame. Momentum
shifted in the second stanza, however, when he rolled to escape an
armbar attempt and ended up on his back. Poirier would spend the
rest of the round on the canvas as Oliveira battered him with
elbows from above. Poirier’s efforts to scramble out of the
position were limited because he didn’t want to risk being
submitted, but as it turned out, that approach only delayed the
inevitable.
“I knew his jiu-jitsu was some of the best — most submissions in
UFC history coming into this fight. That’s kind of the reason I
didn’t go crazy trying to sweep and get up,” Poirier said. “I’d
rather lose the round than give up my back and lose the fight
trying to scramble back up. But he ended up getting to my back
regardless of that. The guy is good, man. He’s the champ.”
Oliviera didn’t waste time in Round 3. He quickly closed the
distance and took Poirier’s back before securing the fight-ending
rear-naked choke just 62 seconds into the period.
“I knew he was gonna start trying to creep around with the body
lock,” Poirier said. “I wanted to keep the whizzer, but he got
around me. I thought at first he was really high and he was going
to slide off. Then he kind of sunk in, and he really got his
position. He started kind of a neck crank.
“I pulled his hands down once and his forearm sllipped under my
chin and once he tucked it, there wasn’t a hand for me to grab to
really pull it down. The same thing [happened against] Khabib
[Nurmagomedov], there’s such a small room for error in these kind
of fights.”
Prior to UFC 269, Poirier succumbed to a third-round rear-naked
choke against Nurmagomedov in a title unification bout at UFC 242
in September 2019. The Louisiana native entered Saturday night with
a chance for redemption and the opportunity to cap off a banner
year that began with a pair of victories over megastar Conor
McGregor. It simply wasn’t meant to be.
“It sucks, man. I worked hard to get back here and fight for
another world title,” Poirier said. “I got choked out again. I’m
just heartbroken.”