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The former UFC interim lightweight champion has an idea for his next bout.
Conor McGregor may want a rematch with Khabib Nurmagomedov in Moscow, but the man whom Khabib most recently vanquished has his eyes on a rematch with McGregor.
Just three days after losing to the reigning UFC lightweight champion in Abu Dhabi, former interim champion Dustin Poirier tweeted his interest in taking on the Irishman once again.
I think me and Conor running it back makes a lot of sense at this point.
— The Diamond (@DustinPoirier) September 10, 2019
Poirier fought McGregor at UFC 178 in 2014, back when both men were featherweights. It took only 1:46 for McGregor to get the TKO victory. While McGregor eventually became the division’s undisputed champion, Poirier moved back up to lightweight and embarked on a 9-1 (1 NC) stretch that saw him win an interim title and get that title shot against Khabib at this past weekend’s UFC 242 in Abu Dhabi. It’s his first loss since his KO vs. Michael Johnson back in 2015, and only the second submission loss of his career. Poirier had written that he was unsure of his fighting future in the aftermath of the Khabib bout, but this tweet seems to indicate that he’s not ready to hang up the gloves just yet.
McGregor hasn’t fought since his October fourth-round neck crank defeat to Nurmagomedov at UFC 229, which was dubbed “the biggest fight in UFC history,” becoming the first MMA event to exceed two million buys. The former simultaneous two-division champion has walked back his latest retirement tweet over the past few weeks, saying that he hopes to make his return to the Octagon. He’s recently made headlines for the wrong reasons, including punching a man at a bar and being under reported investigation for an alleged sexual assault in his native Ireland.