The niceness was mostly eliminated after their second bout, which included an extended brouhaha over a charity donation promised by McGregor to Poirier. UFC’s Brian Ortega faces Yair Rodriguez with momentum in his corner McGregor also claims he was overly confident and too nice to Poirier, thinking back to his win seven years earlier and assuming he could do the same things again. McGregor says he wasn’t completely focused on MMA last year, and he had already arranged his post-fight boxing training camp to prepare for a lucrative fight with Manny Pacquiao. McGregor has hinted at what he suspects to be the causes of his one-sided loss in January to Poirier, who leg-kicked McGregor into serious pain before finishing him with precise punches. “It was a fluke win, and I’m going to correct it on Saturday night.” Their rematch six months ago was in Abu Dhabi inside the UFC’s coronavirus bubble, and Poirier stopped McGregor in the second round of an equally emphatic victory. T-Mobile Arena hadn’t been built when the duo first met in 2014 and McGregor stopped Poirier in 106 seconds. Instead of moving on, he wants to go back, to get it right – and to set a new path in front of the UFC’s first full-capacity crowd in its hometown since the start of the pandemic. His appearances in a cage or a ring are international events, and he has built a celebrity persona that towers above his peers even as its foundation of sports success eroded over the past half-decade.īut instead of settling into what would likely be several comfortable years fighting non-title UFC spectacles and taking more cash-grab boxing matches, McGregor chose to return to his last defeat. McGregor has reached a level of power in the fight game where he’s no longer defined by mere wins and losses. “I see a man here that I’ve defeated, and I know I can defeat again,” Poirier said. Even with a resumption of hostilities, Poirier insisted he won’t allow McGregor into his head as he did in 2014, when McGregor knocked him out in their first meeting. Poirier laughed at the difference from the promotion for their second fight last January, when McGregor was disarmingly friendly and charming throughout. “The trash talk was a lot better than that.”Īfter all, McGregor’s carefully crafted persona doesn’t hit quite so hard when McGregor has had his hand raised in victory just once since the Obama administration: For all his fame, fortune and celebrity, he’s 1-2 in the cage and 0-1 in the boxing ring since November 2016. “You used to be a lot better than that, man,” Poirier said during a rare break in the barrage.
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And while McGregor’s fans drank it up faster than a double shot of their hero’s Proper Twelve whiskey, Poirier appeared to weather the verbal blows perfectly well.