Fight #2: Poirier vs Hooker
Dustin appeared at a crossroads at the start of the pandemic era in 2020. He had just lost to Khabib; to his left was a slow decline and being out of title contention, while to the right lay another handful of years of fighting the best fighters in the world. When the shocking thuds, so visceral they could be felt through the camera by fans thousands of miles away, from Dan Hooker’s fists connected at the end of round two, Dustin could have given up and gone down to the first of what would be a flood of new contenders, hungry to take lumps out of him in search of gold.
He did not even seem to consider it. Poirier simply hiked up his shorts, came back out to start round three, and thrashed Dan Hooker for the last three rounds until he could not walk to the ambulance that took him to the hospital. It’s a brutal sport.
Dustin does not have the chaotic personality expected of someone who is so at home in a cage, who masters violence and is comfortable in carnage. He just comes across as a competitor, a sportsman fighting to make money for his family who happens to compete in bloodsport. His lack of flash fit well in the UFC Apex in those early days, where the sound of shuddering thuds being landed over and over echoed all the louder for the powerful absence of background noise.
He came out of that purgatory as hot as ever, ready to take on the biggest star in the sport and confront the big, bright lights which had stunned him before. Poirier never looked back, emerging from that noiseless vacuum of understated violence, into the view of all, where his hard work and talent has finally paid off. Today, Dustin is known and respected for all the things he deserves acclaim for, and is so far removed from the ignominy of the UFC Apex that he does not even have to think about the warehouse, and is that not the modern prizefighter’s dream?
