Dustin Poirier will no longer be fighting in the main event of this weekend’s UFC Fight Night 76 event in Dublin, Ireland after his opponent Joseph Duffy pulled out due to a concussion, but it’s since emerged that ‘The Diamond’ was given an opportunity to remain on the card.
According to Poirier the UFC told him that TUF: The Smashes winner Norman Parke, who was already scheduled to fight on the main card, had offered to fight Poirier on short notice, but he decided against taking him up on it.
“They did offer me Norman Parke,” Poirier told MMAJunkie. “They said, ‘Hey, Norman Parke will fight you.’ I was going back and forth … but they needed a decision right now, so I sat back with my coaches and talked to my coaches. They said if we can get the fight rescheduled, let’s just do that. We want the guy we’ve been preparing for.”
Other fighters, including Conor McGregor, Paul Felder and Ross Pearson had also shown an interest in taking the bout, though in McGregor’s case that was never going to happen as he fights Jose Aldo in the main event of UFC 194 in December.
Clearly Poirier had made his mind up that he wasn’t going to take a short notice fight regardless of who the opponent was though, so the UFC were left with no option but to remove him from the line-up.
“I’ll fight all of those guys – no problem; but let’s set it on paper,” Poirier explained. “This is a business. I’m a professional athlete. This isn’t, ‘poke somebody and start a street fight.’ I was contracted to fight a guy who I prepared for, and it didn’t happen. Now we’re not just going to scramble and pick a guy and fight.”
