Chael Sonnen slams the idea of having Dustin Poirier vs Conor McGregor 4.
UFC 264 completed the trilogy between Conor McGregor and Dustin Poirier. Even on the one round McGregor was supposed to be the strongest at, it was still a pretty one-sided affair where Poirier was handily winning both on the feet and on the ground.
Somewhat unsurprisingly, Conor McGregor and Dana White both immediately discussed a possibility of a fourth bout. Chael Sonnen slammed that idea, saying that just because it technically ended due to injury, it doesn’t mean we should see it again a fourth time.
“Let’s start with an amazing narrative that there should be a fourth fight. Do you understand the disrespect that you are showing to Dustin Poirier?” Sonnen said on his YouTube channel.
“For any of you that think that that fight warrants another fight, we can do it for money, we could do it for attention and cash. We can do it for a lot of things, but competitiveness and architecture of sport are none of them. That was a beating. That was a beating like few I have ever seen. And don’t forget … two of the three licensed judges that elevated themselves to a main event of a pay-per-view had it 10-8. Do you know what 10-8 means?”
McGregor also recently released photos claiming he had stress fractures before the fight as a reason for the break. It’s something two doctors are doubting, saying it’s an ankle MRI unrelated to his tibia break, but nonetheless, it’s being used as a reason to discredit Poirier’s win.
“It has already been rewritten, and that just fascinates me,” Sonnen said.
“If you get your ass whipped so bad that you’re broken, that doesn’t get you a rematch.”
Sonnen also had a similar sentiment when he discussed the bout on ESPN.
“There was nothing within that five minutes that we saw that was competitive,” Sonnen said (transcript via MMA Fighting). “You used to be able to really count on Conor McGregor, and by the way, I’m not kicking a guy when he’s down, I’m just discussing what I saw. You used to count on Conor to win the stand up portion and [he was a] really hard guy to take down and you could never hold him there if you got him there. These are things you could count on.
“He’s not winning any portion of these fights, and I don’t bring that up to put him down, I bring that up to tell you there is no need, at least from a competitive architecture, there is nothing here that warrants seeing these guys do it again.”