Finish #4: Poirier vs Green
Dustin "The Diamond" Poirier boxing up Bobby Green with ease 💎 pic.twitter.com/pZS7lOm5fk
— 🏆TODAY DUSTIN BECOMES CHAMP💎 (@PoirierGaethje) March 17, 2023
Early in his lightweight career, the Diamond ran into fellow future lightweight contender Bobby Green. ‘King’ Green was 4-1 in the UFC (after going 4-1 in Strikeforce too) and defined his unique flow-boxing style more and more with every fight. Dustin has a history of refusing to play the game of certain striking stylists: he does not handfight at all, he makes fights dirty for rangy kickers, and he does not mess around when foes want to make it a dance. Dustin Poirier does not dance, he fights, as Bobby Green found out, much to his chagrin.
When Green tried to walk forward at Poirier and slip punches off of reflexes alone, with no guard, Dustin made him pay for it. When he taunted, Dustin made his head hit the canvas. When he still wanted to fight with his hands low and swagger his way forward after getting dropped, Dustin put his lights out. The buttkicking showed where Dustin was headed, especially as it was the fourth straight dominant win he had since moving up. Only the most dangerous fighters manage to knock out Bobby Green, and Dustin was the first to do so in a clean manner. Bobby would go on to dip in and out of the lightweight top-fifteen for the next eight years, to this very day.
The lesson? Try to flow on the new Dustin Poirier and he will charge you like a bull. He was still growing into his body in this new division and needed a bit more fine-tuning technically, but soon he would also be nigh-impossible to out-gun, once he reached his prime.
