Dustin Poirier’s retirement fight will be a trilogy clash with Max Holloway for the BMF title at UFC 318 in New Orleans, Louisiana on July 19th.
The 36-year-old Poirier had signalled several months back that he intended to have one last fight, but he’s admitted that a third fight with Holloway hadn’t been on his mind.
“I was asking for [Justin] Gaethje,” Poirier told MMAJunkie. “I was asking [UFC CBO Hunter Campbell] and the UFC for Gaethje because we’re 1-1, I wanted to close out that trilogy. For some reason, they really wanted this fight, so I said, ‘OK, that’s cool’ because I respect the guy from my last fight. I don’t know what their thought process was putting this together for me and Max, but I have a lot of respect for him, so it made sense to me.
“I said, ‘Legends only.’ He definitely fits that.”
Poirier and Holloway first faced each other at UFC 143 all the way back in 2012, with Holloway winning via a first round triangle armbar submission on that occasion.
Then seven years later they squared off again at UFC 236 in 2019 after Holloway decided to test himself up a weight class for the interim lightweight title, but this time it was Poirier who emerged the dominant winner via unanimous decision.
Since then Poirier has gone 5-4, while Holloway has gone 6-4, but there’s much more to it than that.
For Poirier, his biggest accomplishment in the years since has been his blockbuster back-to-back TKO wins over Conor McGregor in 2021, which took his star power to the next level.
However, though he also had three separate lightweight title shots, Poirier was submitted each time by Khabib Nurmagomedov, Charles Oliveira and most recently Islam Makhachev in his last Octagon appearance in June of last year, while a previous BMF title challenge ended in a KO loss to Justin Gaethje.
As for Holloway, he would go on to lose his featherweight title later that year to Alexander Volkanovski, and has since lost to him a further two times.
However, in April of last year, Holloway did earn a famous last second KO victory over Justin Gaethje to win the symbolic BMF belt, though later in the year he was KO’d by Ilia Topuria in another attempt to reclaim the 145lb title.
Holloway vs. Poirier 3 is currently the only fight booked for UFC 318, which in a nod to the fact it’s Poirier’s final fight will take place in his own home state of Louisiana.
“This is the dream,” Poirier said. “This is the plan. I’m the one who reached out to the UFC and said, ‘Hey, I would love to retire at home. To my surprise, they obliged and said, ‘OK, we’ll do everything we can to make it happen.’ It’s amazing when a company works with you like that and has respect for you enough to try to put things in motion because so many things in their schedule is booked up for the whole year previously. People don’t understand how much goes on behind the scenes. These dates and locations are pre-planned for a long time. For them to scrap something and bring the cage to Louisiana and set it up for me to retire at home, it’s a dream come true.”
