Dustin Poirier explains why he didn’t trade Max Holloway

Dustin Poirier didn’t want to spend more than 10 seconds in the pocket with Max Holloway. Holloway’s iconic gesture of pointing to the ground to invite his opponent for a brawl started with Justin Gaethje. After picking Gaethje apart for five rounds, Holloway invited him to get up and trade the pocket in the final seconds and knocked him out in an iconic buzzer beater at UFC 300.

When Poirier (30-10) faced Holloway in his retirement fight at UFC 318 last year, “The Diamond” knew a similar invite was coming. However, Poirier wanted to make sure he didn’t have to deal with Holloway for more than 10 seconds. Poirier’s wife, Jolie, had also warned him not to be seduced by Holloway’s downward-pointing gesture. Confident in his own battle in the pocket, Poirier ultimately decided to trade with Holloway. However, “Blessed” began to pick Poirier apart, forcing him to qualify in the final seconds.

Making a business decision

“I knew it was coming,” Poirier recently told the UFC. “But when he started pointing down, I thought, ‘Wait a minute, let me look at the clock.’ I don’t want to point down with twenty seconds to go. I think of Justin Gaethje lying face down. My wife also said to me the night before, ‘If it points down, don’t do it. You don’t point down, you don’t do that.’… I’m just going to throw for ten seconds. And then he started eating me in the pocket, that’s where I do my best work. He enlightened me there. So I had to grab him.”