Dustin Poirier has his UFC title shot in the works. As he prepares to take on division champion Charles Oliveira, Poirier a jiu jitsu black belt gave his honest assessment of his last attempt to capture the Lightweight Championship.
“Khabib Nurmagomedov…I’ve never felt anything like it and you know I have 46 fights,” Poirier told Valuetainment . “I’ve fought all kinds of different people , all kinds of different styles and been around the world training at gyms. This guy is good. His understanding of his weight distribution, where my weight needs to be to keep me up, to build back up and his understanding of grappling is impressive.”
Poirier added:
“The best I’ve ever felt, the best I’ve ever seen… his understanding of what I needed to do and what positions I needed to be in to advance. He was steps ahead of me.”
Meanwhile many contend that Poirier actually had a shot to take down Nurmagomedov during his infamous guillotine attempt.
Here’s Dustin’s first and 2nd attempt at guillotine on Khabib Nurmagomedov courtesy of a google search:
Here’s what Khabib said about the grappling move in the post fight interview:
“There was never a moment when I thought that it’s all over. It wasn’t critical. The first guillotine attempt (it happened about a minute until the end of the 2nd round) he got me very well and it was very deep but I was able to get out of it. It’s something I expected because I’ve seen all of his (Poirier’s) fights and he attempted guillotine in his previous fights. But in the second attempt (in the 3rd round) I purposely gave up my neck because I knew he was very tired and that he would spend even more energy trying to finish the submission. That was part of my game with him…”
Of course Poirier is not the first to attempt to guillotine Nurmagomedov – this same strategy was utilized by both Rafael Dos Anjos and Michael Johnson.