It’s a trilogy fight, a retirement fight, and a BMF title fight. Dustin Poirier vs. Max Holloway 3 headlines UFC 318, and despite Poirier already being up 2-0 in the pair’s series, fans seem to be perfectly happy with the match-up serving as the send-off for Louisiana’s own Poirier.
It’s been a long, winding road for Dustin Poirier, who started his career as a promising featherweight but ran the risk of becoming just another Conor McGregor stepping stone after losing to the Irish star early on. Yet Poirier turned things around, primarily with a move to lightweight that paid off in spades. He’d win an interim title there (against Holloway, coincidentally), and despite coming up short against Khabib Nurmagomedov in a title unification bout, still went on to avenge his loss to McGregor and emerge as one of the division’s fan favourites.
Another two title shots, against Charles Oliveira and Islam Makhachev, saw Poirier fall short again and again. Now, rather than, as he put it this week, be retired by the sport, he’s walking away on his own terms at age 36.
Not a bad way to end it, especially if Poirier were to claim the symbolic “BMF” title by defeating Holloway on Saturday. The lineage of that title dates back to Masvidal vs. Diaz (Nate Diaz proclaimed himself the “baddest motherf*cker” ahead of his fight with Jorge Madvidal, leading to the UFC creating the belt), and had been dusted off on a couple more occasions.
The second involved Poirier himself, who was defeated by Justin Gaethje; Holloway then beat Gaethje at UFC 300 to claim what really comes down to bragging rights, or an all-violence title, not all that dissimilar to the old UFC Super-Fight title in a sense (though that was an open weight belt prior to weight classes).
Ahead of UFC 318 in New Orleans, the key players will be on hand for the event’s pre-fight press conference. Catch that in the live stream above.
