Cormier: Poirier is ‘more confident’ than I’ve seen in a long time

Daniel Cormier says Dustin Poirier is ready to go for UFC 257.

Dustin Poirier is brimming with confidence ahead of UFC 257 according to Daniel Cormier, who spoke with Poirier about his highly anticipated matchup with Conor McGregor earlier this week.

While the media hype has been largely centred on McGregor, who returns to the octagon this weekend after a 12-month hiatus, ‘DC’ has assured us that ‘The Diamond’ is not to be overlooked against ‘The Notorious’ on fight night.

“People talk like, ‘well, you guys are overlooking Dustin’,” Cormier told ESPN. “No, we aren’t. We are not overlooking Dustin. And after speaking to Dustin today, he is more confident than I’ve seen in a long time and it ain’t a put on — he’s not trying to put on and make people feel like he’s ready to go. Dustin Poirier is ready to fight. When we left Vegas, whatever questions he had to ask for himself in terms of ‘what time should I be sleeping? What time should I be doing this?’, he had a lot of different things he needed to figure out and get ready, and over the course of that last week, he’s got them all answered and he seems sure that he’s gonna get his job done”.

McGregor finished Poirier via first-round TKO in a featherweight matchup back in 2014 but the latter has improved leaps-and-bounds since then and gone on to win an interim lightweight title. The American Top Team product is coming off an impressive unanimous decision win over Dan Hooker at UFC Vegas 4 while McGregor is looking to improve on his stunning 40-second knockout of Donald Cerrone at UFC 246.

UFC 257: Poirier vs. McGregor II takes place this Saturday, Jan. 23 at the Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.