Up and coming featherweight star Dustin Poirier can hold his head high despite losing to The Korean Zombie last night at ‘UFC On Fuel TV 3’ after producing one of the fights of the year, but emotion’s were running high for the 23 year-old in his post-fight interview with Ariel Helwani as he tried to come to terms with his first loss in the UFC.
“I had a really long training camp, man. I put 100% of myself into the training camp…” he said as his voice cracked with emotion.
“I’m trying not to get emotional, I just care so much. I let myself down. I deserved to win, my wife deserved for us to win…” he added before having to stop to compose himself again.
This was a big moment in the young fighter’s career, giving him his first opportunity to fight in the main event of a UFC card, but he doesn’t blame the pressure of the occasion or the fact it was his first five round fight for the defeat.
“It wasn’t even the pressure, I felt fine. I was excited to fight in the main event, it was a huge opportunity for me. I wasn’t really worried about the five rounds, my strength and conditioning program was incredible – I felt like I was in the best shape ever. I just took some bad shots and made some mistakes, but Im’ gonna go back to the gym and work on it and come back and get a ‘W’.”
Poirier did a good job of escaping from a number of potentially fight-ending submissions in the early rounds of the fight, but couldn’t escape the D’arce choke that forced him to tap in the fourth and he admits that he was dazed by that stage after being hurt just moments earlier.
“He hit me with some good shots in the fourth round, and I mean I was never completely out of it, but whenever I came back to realizing what was going on I was in the D’arce position and I felt it, but I just didn’t defend it right and I felt like I let myself down.”
Despite his obvious disappointment there was still a lot of upsides to Poirier’s performance and he took home an extra $40,000 bonus for being in the ‘Fight Of The Night’ so the future’s still bright for him.
Check out his full interview below.
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