Poirier wonders whether loss will change Gaethje
Dustin Poirier: “We do know he has great wrestling and after his first loss he could be changing his mind about his fighting style. He could be maturing …”
Justin Gaethje arrived in the UFC with a perfect 18-0 record, a promise to always be frighteningly exciting, and a prediction that given his hyper-violent style he would lose. ‘The Highlight’ was right.
He debuted with an extraordinarily exciting win over Michael Johnson at the TUF 25 Finale on July 7, 2017. That won the Fight of the Night and a Performance of the Night bonus and was considered by many to be the fight of the year. Then lost an extraordinarily exciting fight vs. Eddie Alvarez at UFC 218 on December 2, 2017, that also won fight of the night
Next Gaethje fights Dustin Poirier at UFC on FOX 29 on April 14. Poirier too has lost some fights while throwing recklessly and has matured. He wonders whether Gaethje will too.
We don’t know how he’s going to react after his first loss, said Poirier to Mike Bohn for MMAjunkie. When he’s knocking everybody out and making everybody quit and beating everybody up, he’s the same guy every fight. He comes in and is brawling and being crazy and taking big risks and leaving it all out there. We’ll see what happens.
We do know he has great wrestling and after his first loss he could be changing his mind about his fighting style. He could be maturing and thinking, ‘I won’t be doing this long if I keep fighting like this.’ But we’re preparing for anything.
I’m here to be the sniper and have a long career. In a perfect world I go in there and make him miss and put him away and make it look clean and cement him and be the matador. But in real life, I have that dog that comes out of me. No matter what I do and how technical I try to be, I know deep down inside it’s just waiting and waiting. So it’s really a battle within myself. I believe this fight can be as hard or as easy as I make it. I’m the superior skilled fighter in this fight.
Maybe he is a little more hesitant and he’s working on defense more than anything, but I think down to his core he’s a scrapper, and he’s a warrior and a gladiator, and he’s going to want to put on a show every time. I believe he’s true to that, and I respect that.
I believe he’s one of the mentally toughest guys there is, and I believe fighting is probably 70 percent mental, and he breaks guys. He beats guys that are better than him and he just makes them not want to fight anymore. A guy like Justin is dangerous from bell to bell for five rounds every fight because he believes in himself. And I’m a fan, and I respect that, but this is where you run into somebody who’s better than you and believes in himself.
