Former UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov spoke about the title fight between Charles Oliveira and Dustin Poirier at the tournament UFC 269.
“There was such a fighter – Charlie Brenneman, he performed in the weight category of 77 kg. In 2012, I didn’t know Charles Oliveira,” Khabib answered at a press conference on December 13 in Moscow.
“What went wrong with Dustin Poirier? Every person has a resource. It happens that when a person starts a new business and at the beginning he is on fire – he goes on, the business goes on, but there comes a time when it goes out a little. And he wants to withdraw money and open another business. At the beginning, you think that you will be doing this all your life, but the time comes – and you are a little bit into this business, and you want to invest in something else. The same thing happens with a fighter. There is fire, hunger, when you really want it. There comes a time when you want it, but you don’t really want it. It happens that the fire has died out, but the money remains in the contract, and this money can be pulled out by fighting. There are such moments, too, with the fighters. I saw this. The fact that he says after the fight that he needs to sit down and think about whether he needs it at all – if a person has such thoughts in his head, then it already means … He will win and lose. Where necessary, he will not go to the end.
“It happens that you look at a fighter and see how quickly he changes. I also tell my relatives that while there is time, you need to be active and fight. And if this switch is flipped, it will never come back. I think he has [Порье] The switch flipped and there was a time when Frankie Edgar was before me, Benson Henderson, Pettis, Conor, then I came along. None of them remained. Everybody left. Now is Charles Oliveira’s time. Now is the time of Islam Makhachev, Beneil Dariush, Justin Gaethje and Charles Oliveira. Then they leave and others come. Time is here. Charles Oliveira was better – strangled and left. It’s a merry-go-round that never stops.”
Oliveira defeated Poirier by submission in the third round and thus successfully defended the UFC lightweight belt.
.
