Poirier: McGregor Rematch Will Happen ‘In The Octagon Or On The Sidewalk’

UFC president Dana White wants a fourth Dustin Poirier vs. Conor McGregor fight. So does Poirier, who wasn’t happy about McGregor wishing death on him.

UFC 264 just went down from a sold out T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada and it was a wild night from start to finish. Unfortunately, the main event between Dustin Poirier and Conor McGregor went a bit sideways. More accurately, McGregor’s ankle twisted sideways and folded over on itself, causing a lower tibia fracture that ended the fight between the first and second round (watch the highlights here).

While Poirier had spent the last two minutes beating on McGregor from top position, the fight was by no means a done deal when the ankle incident happened, so now we’re looking at the possibility of a fourth McGregor-Poirier bout. UFC president Dana White basically confirmed it during the UFC 264 post-fight press conference.

“Second leg break in what, the last three fights or something?” White said, shaking his head. “It sucks, it’s brutal, and it’s not the way you want to see fights end. So … Dustin Poirier will fight for the title, and when Conor is healed and ready to go, you do the rematch I guess. I dunno.”

“Listen, the fight didn’t get finished,” he continued. “You can’t have a fight finish that way. So we’ll see how this all plays out. Who knows how long Conor’s out, so…. Poirier will do his thing until Conor’s ready.”

White defended the decision to leave the door open on another fight by noting McGregor was on his feet and fighting back when the injury went down.

“He got back up on his feet and was throwing punches. His ankle snapped because he was throwing punches. He was fighting back. It’s not like he was up against the cage defenseless and Dustin was unloading on him.”

As for Poirier, he complimented his new #1 contender for a well fought fight.

“The shitty part for Dustin is he gets out of the guillotine, gets top position, lands some great elbows. Ends up winning the round and then Conor breaks his ankle. So the storyline is then ‘Conor broke his ankle’ rather than ‘Dustin looked good.’”

Even though Poirier now holds a 2-1 record over McGregor, he sounded more insistent than White that a fourth fight go down in the future.

“No, we are going to fight again whether it’s on the Octagon or on the sidewalk,” he said.

“You don’t say the stuff he said. My wife’s solid as a rock, I’m not worried about that. That’s noise. He was saying he was going to kill me. You don’t say stuff like that, that he was going to murder me. You don’t say stuff about people’s wives either, but I know that’s zero chance. But there is a chance someone could die and you don’t wish that on anybody.”

With McGregor going into surgery on Sunday morning, it’s going to be a while before he’s back in the cage. That leaves Dustin free to fight for the lightweight title again, after a failed attempt to wrest the 155 belt off Khabib Nurmagomedov in September of 2019. But hopefully, he’ll get a little time before that as well.

“I’ve been preparing for a fight since last year,” Poirier said. “I was getting ready for Conor in January, as soon as that was done I knew the rematch was next. So I got back from Abu Dhabi and started training again. I got a nine week camp but as soon as I got back from Abu Dhabi … I got one trip I got to decompress a little bit. But I was getting ready to fight him again.”

“The last thing I want to do now is go home and sign a contract and start getting ready right away. We’ll see, I just need to go home and think about some things and decompress and spend some time with my family.”