Fight #1: Poirier vs Holloway 2
Dustin Poirier’s finest hour, and probably his best fight, came when he challenged for interim gold against featherweight champion and all-time great Max Holloway. Despite being a sizable underdog, Dustin hurt Max on the feet more than anyone ever had, but could not actually drop him, but would have if the fence was not there. Max battled back and pushed Dustin to the limit, but when he appeared to be folding, Poirier fought back from the brink, finding the composure and energy to win the fourth and fifth rounds against the man with the best late-round abilities in the sport.
For five rounds, not a round passed without instances of high drama and/or action occurring. The pugilistic abilities of these men in four ounce gloves was something to behold. Lesser men would have fallen from any of half a dozen different shots Poirier landed in the first round alone, but Max absorbed a stampede’s worth of damage in one of the best displays of durability in MMA history ‘Blessed’ is a fitting name given his chin and heart, as Holloway still fought back every single time to give something in return to make Dustin back up.
Every single opponent Dustin had started rolling downhill on for a while had given in. Max Holloway would not, did not even get close to doing so. It was like the Jim Miller fight for Dustin, just if Holloway was a boss ten levels stronger than Miller. Poirier had to push through hell and readjust his approach multiple times just to stay in the fight and give himself a chance to win it. That is why Poirier has a unique mind for fighting, and not only a unique physical ability to fight, to truly fight, to scrap, brawl, etc. He may have been sniped in the past by a natural puncher in McGregor, but Dustin proved later that the fighter inside him could still face down Conor’s any day, proving himself to be the better fighter. But Conor was not even his toughest test. Max Holloway was, and Dustin beat him comprehensively, pushing him into his next era, that of a veteran, burgeoning prizefighting superstar.
It may not have been his prettiest victory, or the one that garnered the most attention, or even the one that was most violent; but when people point to a fight and say, “This is why Dustin Poirier is great,” the Max Holloway fight encompasses it all more than any other. His best win, capping off an incredible winning streak, against one of the best fighters ever, delivering the fight of the year for 2018 — beating Holloway in that fashion was what cemented Dustin as a legend to me. Paid in Full.
