Dustin Poirier is still an elite lightweight. As the face of Benoit St. Denis can attest.
The lightweight star got back into the win column with an emphatic second-round KO at UFC 299 on Saturday, leaving the Frenchman flat on the mat with a hard right counter. The Miami crowd is not far from the U.S. top team headquarters in South Florida, where Poirier trains.
St. Denis played the aggressor in the first round, although several of his strikes resulted in him having to avoid Poirier’s guillotine. The judges unanimously called the round for St. Denis, but Poirier left no doubt in the second.
Poirier’s desire for the guillotine almost reached self-parody when he stunned St. Denis with an uppercut and immediately went for another choke instead of landing some shots – he said after the fight “I’ll never stop doing it”. – But finally he reached home after a few seconds.
This was a huge moment for one of the UFC’s most popular fighters. Poirier had lost two of his last three fights to top lightweights Charles Oliveira and Justin Gaethje, and a date with a rising star in St. Denis was not exactly favorable. Instead, as Poirier later said, he was the one doing the favor.
“I took this fight because he had finished his last five opponents,” Poirier said in his post-fight interview with Joe Rogan. “He wasn’t a name that the world really knew, he’s moving and he’s dangerous. Every win in his professional career, he’s finished, and he has a never-say-die attitude. When I saw him And saw something about his fight, I called a friend of mine. I said ‘I have to take this fight because I respect this sport that we do.’
“Eddie Alvarez gave me my shot in Dallas when he was a former champ and I was moving up. You have to pay it back, keep your spot or lose it. That’s the nature of the beast.”
St. Denis entered UFC 299 on a five-fight winning streak, all finishing in the first two rounds. Poirier represented a chance for him to break into the top echelon of challengers in the division under Islam Makhachev, but it turned out to be the 35-year-old veteran’s night.
