Dustin Poirier uncertain he will fight at lightweight again: ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen’
Dustin Poirier admits he doesn’t know what his fighting future holds.
Poirier is coming off a submission loss to Charles Oliveira for the lightweight title at UFC 269. It was a disappointing loss for “The Diamond” and what hurts him the most is he says he knows he is better than how he fought.
“I’m just so much better than that, and everybody says that when they lose, but I know I am,” Poirier said when appearing on The MMA Hour. “Just sucks cause it’s one of those things. Maybe never get the opportunity again to call myself world champion, and to under-perform, I owed it to myself. This one was for me. It wasn’t for the money. It wasn’t for proving anything. It was for me and I f*cking fumbled. It hurts.”
With Poirier now 0-2 in undisputed lightweight title fights, he admits he isn’t sure what is next for him. He knows he can continue to cut down to 155lbs if he wants but he admits he may never fight at lightweight ever again.
“I don’t know if I’m going to make that cut again,” Poirier said. “I might never fight at 155 pounds again. I don’t know the future. I could have cut a few more pounds. I could have come in at 152 on this fight. My cut went so smooth, I felt great. Of course, that’s because I did all the things I was supposed to do in my training camp that made the cut so great. But I don’t know if I want to go through that training camp again where I’m hungry everyday and competing in the gym and pushing myself on the low calories. We’ll see, I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Dustin Poirier is no stranger to changing weight classes as he went from featherweight to lightweight after suffering a bad KO loss to Conor McGregor. After the loss, he said he didn’t want to climb the featherweight ladder again and he now feels like he is in the same position at lightweight.
“That’s kind of what nudged me over the edge to go to [155 pounds] when I was at 45,” Poirier explained. “I was close to a title shot and I lost to Conor [McGregor] in 2014, and I knew I would have to make that cut three, four, five more times or whatever it would be to get another title shot, and I just didn’t have it in me to do it. Here I am at 55, and I’m thinking if I’ve got to fight two or three more times to get a title shot, I don’t know if I want to live those training camps on low calories, pushing my body like that.”
