Dustin Poirier and Michael Chandler delivered an action packed three rounder on the main card of UFC 281.
While either competitor had his moments, Chandler’s striking success was perhaps overshadowed with his ‘dirty’ antics.
Chandler has been accused of several fouls. First there was the fish hooking – which is a certified foul and one of the rare moves that you can’t do in MMA.
“Told him this is my house. That’s what I told him. I said, this is my house. You know, that’s it. And I told him he’s a dirty motherf***er, too, for putting his finger, for putting his fingers in my mouth and blowing his nose. And, you know.” – Poirier said right after the attempt.
Chandler’s response at the presser was the following:
“I will admit, yes, his mouth was open and my hand went inside of there. It was on his mouthpiece. He bit down. I was trying to pull it out. He didn’t.”
“It wasn’t as though I was trying to pull it out and he was biting it and I couldn’t get it out. It was more just the angle. I mean, you’re getting pushed up against the cage. I mean, it’s just and then there was I mean, I think that was all.”
Now Poirier shared more detail during his appearance on the MMA Hour:
“Yeah. It doesn’t hurt, but the leverage you get on that grip. You know he had his fingers on my top teeth where my mouth guard is. So he tried to get my neck up to lock in a choke. The leverage you get from gripping that is hard for me to keep my chin down… I bit the s**t out of his finger. I had my mouth guard in, so only my bottom teeth could get him. ”
When asked whether he wanted to face Dariush, Dustin Poirier responded as follows when chatting with Ariel Helwani:
“Not really, honestly. No disrespect to Beneil. He’s a great fighter, and you know, he did it the right way. He’s a respectful guy, a hard worker. He goes in there and handles business, I respect that, and I’ll watch when he fights. When we just talked about the other names that I fought recently, that one’s not like super exciting when I think about it.”