A Win is a Win
The world watched as Dustin Poirier got the win over Conor McGregor last night.
I’m surprised to see so many McGregor supporters trying to take the win away from Dustin Poirier. The win was certainly unconventional and unfortunate, but it’s a W in the books and it’s a clean win at that.
For anyone who hasn’t seen the fight, this is what happened.
Conor threw a hard leg kick.
Poirier “checked” the kick. (It’s a defense technique where you lift your left and point your kneecap towards the kick so that the person kicking kicks against hard bone rather than soft muscle.)
Later in the fight, Conor’s left ankle blew out right at the point that appears to be hyperextended.
You can see that Poirier (in the red) felt that he checked the kick as he points to McGregor right afterwards.
I’ve been looking forward to this fight for weeks. Although it was anti climactic in a sense, it’s also a perfectly valid victory and the night belongs to Poirier.
Checking kicks is solid MMA. It’s a technique and Poirier obviously injured McGregor’s ankle when he did that.
In addition, Poirier was beating the shit out of McGregor the entire round. In fact, 2 of the judges scored it a 10-8 round.
There’s a lot of talk about another fight, but it’s not a fight I want to see.
Poirier is clearly the better fighter. He’s better in all areas. Nothing about this fight discredits the win from Poirier, he dominated the fight. We’ll never know what would have happened, but if the fight would have continued it’s very easy to see Poirier completely destroying McGregor and finishing the fight.
A win is a win.