Dustin Poirier looked impressive tonight as he weathered the early storm in the early stages of his fight with Diego Brandao and then came on strong in the second half of the round to produce a convincing TKO finish.
Round One
Poirier starts off with a low kick, then Brandao attempts a high kick in return that misses, as does a follow-up punch.
Another low kick for Poirier and Brandao scores with a running punch to the mid-section. Brandao comes forward aggressively and Poirier stumbles to the mat. Brandao follows up with an illegal kick while Poirier is grounded and immediately apologizes as Poirier gets upright.
Poirier is doing his best to keep this fight at range, but Brandao is winging some very dangerous strikes in his direction.
Poirier continuing with leg kicks as his main offense while Brandao’s been having some success with body punches.
Both fighters land a hard punch in close. A kick stumbles Poirier again. Brandao closes the distance and tries to trip his opponent, but Poirier is hard to get down and keep him there.
A little lull in the action and then Brandao secures another nice takedown. Poirier does well to scoot back against the fence and get up though.
Immediately Poirier turns up the heat and starts pouring it on with a blitz of punches against the cage. Brandao’s not really offering much in return so Poirier continues to fire off strikes, landing a series of blows to the body, then back upstairs again.
Brandao’s clearly hurt and not doing the right things to defend himself here. He tries to clinch up and Poirier gets a takedown. Brandao is immediately back up, but is then met by a left hook that drops him back down to the canvas.
Poirier is not letting him off the hook and continues to rain down punches on the mat and with Brandao looking close to being knocked out, the referee jumps in and calls an end to the fight, handing Poirier an impressive TKO victory with 4.54mins on the clock.
