Bad BLOOD IN the Octagon AS Alvarez meets POIRIER
Headline bout at UFC Fight Night might settle a social media score
You don’t have to go back far to find a time when Dustin Poirier and Eddie Alvarez didn’t seem to share any particular animosity toward one another.
Even after their first fight was stopped and ruled a no-contest because Alvarez hit Poirier with two illegal knees to the head, the two lightweights stood in the Octagon and seemed generally cordial.
Poirier even defended Alvarez, and it seemed all but certain the UFC would book a quick rematch so that they could settle the score in the Octagon and everyone could move on.
Then Alvarez went on Twitter and said that Poirier had “wanted out” even before the illegal knees.
Right there and then things went sour.
“Me standing up for him when he did something illegal and then him going on social media and saying I quit and wanted out of that fight. That makes me feel like (the knees) weren’t an accident,” Poirier said this week.
“You just don’t say that after you did something illegal.”
It might not be overly obvious for those who don’t follow MMA closely, but there’s an unwritten code in the sport.
In Poirier’s mind, Alvarez violated that code, and their mutual resentment has permeated fight week in Calgary.
Tonight’s main event in UFC Fight Night at the Saddledome doesn’t necessarily need bad blood as a selling point, but it certainly doesn’t hurt.
To be clear, Alvarez and Poirier respect one another as athletes. Each of them knows that the other is tough as nails and has fought and beat some of the world’s best lightweights.
Outside the Octagon, though, Poirier really, really doesn’t have much time for Alvarez.
“We do what we do, if that’s the perception he gets from one experience, one fight, one tweet, I respect everything this man has done,” Alvarez said. “Everybody who’s on this journey in the lightweight division is tough. For him to say he doesn’t like me personally is a little foolish. He doesn’t know me.”
None of this is actually going to matter when the cage closes tonight, of course. Personal beef has always been a selling point in combat sports, but both Poirier and Alvarez have been playing this game long enough that they ’ve learned how to check their emotions at the door.
There are way more important things at stake tonight.
It’s been debated all week whether the winner will get the next lightweight title shot against 155-pound champion Khabib Nurmagomedov.
With Conor McGregor clearing up his legal issues on Thursday, there’s a good chance Alvarez and Poirier won’t jump right to the front of the line. The Irishman’s a big enough star that if he wants the next crack at Nurmagomedov, he’s going to get it.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t acknowledge that the winner of tonight’s big bout probably should get the next shot.
Alvarez is a former champion after all, and is coming off a hugely impressive finish of Justin Gaethje. Poirier also beat Gaethje in April of this year and knocked off former champion Anthony Pettis in late 2017, as well.
Prior to that, they fought each other and put on a thrilling backand-forth matchup that likely would have been up for countless fight-of-the-year honours if it hadn’t ended with the illegal knees.
If tonight’s fight comes anywhere close to matching the frenetic pace that their first matchup had, it’s going to make fans at the Saddledome very happy and elevate the winner’s stock significantly.
Nothing is 100 per cent guaranteed in MMA, but all available evidence suggests we’re in for an all-out brawl between two elite athletes tonight.
That was always the biggest selling point for Poirier and Alvarez as the main event in Calgary, not bad blood or title implications.
“He’s going to be in it from bell to bell for every round, and I’ve got to take him out,” Poirier said. “I don’t put on boring fights. My last fight was fight of the year so far, and this fight this weekend has the potential to be the same.”