This worked very well, as the shift covered more distance than simply jabbing into range against someone so tall, but the issue came when Hooker stood his ground as Poirier was expecting him to drop back. Poirier’s favorite combination in this fight was a response to Hooker’s backstepping jab - he’d throw away his left as he shifted into orthodox, crossing over Hooker’s lead hand. Dan Hooker showed both the upsides and the downsides of Poirier’s approach as the massive Hooker looked to exit, Poirier chased him down very effectively, but was caught between stances and bare when he couldn’t fully step through. Poirier’s willingness and skill in walking with his punches, shifting through them and crowding with them, was a meaningful component of his fantastic victory over Max Holloway - as Holloway’s linear retreats were punished by Poirier’s ability to cover large swathes of distance - but the downside is with a fighter who isn’t necessarily retreating. To his credit, Poirier wasn’t as keen to leave himself on a platter moving forward, but he also didn’t clean his feet up completely - instead, Poirier just harnessed that messiness in a very specific and effective way. Poirier’s last loss on the feet was to Michael Johnson, a blisteringly quick combination-counterpuncher, and the issue was Poirier simply ceding his positioning in the pocket for no good reason throwing himself off balance with a lead-uppercut left Poirier upright and squared, and Johnson summarily made him pay. McGregor had easily found a way around the guard of Poirier in their first fight, but McGregor is a counterpuncher at heart, and Poirier’s habits seemed ill-equipped for that as well. While the cause of Poirier’s first loss to McGregor (seen later) was a concern, much of the educated public stood by the -300 price-tag for McGregor for a different reason. As Poirier noted before the fight, that’s what he represented in the face of the most natural talent in recent memory - the 9-to-5ers who needed to find a way against all odds - and find a way he did. What Poirier did at UFC 257, then, was a victory for the worker - the ones who are forced to critically view their own craft, and come out the other side better fighters than the ones who started out with all the tools. McGregor 2 never seemed in doubt to the public - everything that Poirier had done while warring in the trenches for years at a time, full-time, McGregor had surpassed with what seemed like absurd effortlessness and growing disinterest. That shared blemish aside, the favorite going into the rematch of Poirier vs. The obvious exception to both of those stories was Khabib Nurmagomedov, who spoiled the UFC’s hopes for a lucrative McGregor Era just as surely as he did Dustin Poirier’s grueling rise to title contention. In contrast to Poirier’s lightweight run, McGregor’s appearances were defined by a different sort of graft, the kind inherent in a promotion looking for profits the megastar dropped off the map for years at a time, walking back into main-events and title-fights at a whim, and yet largely justifying that treatment with his performances anyway. He fought hard and he fought often, and he had messier showings (such as the Hooker fight) but always against the best that the UFC had to offer him. Poirier’s later success has been a matter of many things - widening into his frame since his featherweight days, and gaining more than his fair share of durability and power in the process - but the lion’s share of it was just hard graft starting with the Miller fight where Poirier introduced his jab, “The Diamond” went from strength to strength as he ripped his opponents apart in wars of attrition. Dustin Poirier was quite painfully touched by greatness at UFC 178, but no reasonable man entertained the possibility of him touching greatness in return - nor should they have, until he did exactly that. Even the beginnings of their forays into 155 made the same point, as McGregor torched the great Eddie Alvarez while his counterpart was getting cut down by Michael Johnson. The nascent Louisianan was only five years into his career but already had 22 fights, had lost to the two biggest names he’d faced, and getting crushed in 106 seconds seemed to write his fate as the paradoxical fragile banger. McGregor 1 was a true crossroads fight for both men at the time, and both ending up top-contenders didn’t seem particularly likely while Conor McGregor rode a wave of momentum from his debut - a wave that ended up drowning his opponent on the night - Poirier was already uncomfortably close to being a defined action-fighter. McGregor won the first time, and seven years later, Poirier proved to be the one who learned.
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