Dustin Poirier took his appearance on The MMA Hour as a chance to discuss his opinion on the greatest boxer in the UFC. His answer, considering he could make a decent claim of his own, may surprise you.
Poirier named interim bantamweight champ Petr Yan his pick for the UFC’s #1 boxer, and it’s clear that “The Diamond” has thought this one through. “I think Petr Yan (is the best boxer in the UFC), I really do.
Poirier Names Petr Yan the UFC’s Best Boxer
Just the way he moves. He doesn’t waste a lot of movements. His positioning is always crisp. His footwork, he’s never out of position. He doesn’t load up, but he throws clean power shots. Good accuracy, but he works the body well. Goes up, goes down. There’s just a lot of things that he does really well.”
When Helwani pointed out that, since Poirier beat Max Holloway, who many consider the best boxer in the promotion, he may well have had reason to answer himself, “The Diamond” had a short, sweet response.
“I’m on that list.” Why’d you go charles?
“Well, I want to be the world champion, that’s the goal. But like we always talk about here, we’re beating the same drum, I’m a prize fighter. The goal was to fight Oliveira for the world title, but to do it under the right circumstances. Of course I still do wanna fight Nate and hopefully I can one day but for now it’s championship mindset.”
As for his upcoming fight with Charles Oliveira, Dustin Poirier was philosophical in his view of the title bout. “The thing about lighting is, every time the bell rings, we get a live real time appraisal. You know, we change from fight to fight, things happen, we’re in different mental spaces, different physical positions, in shape, injuries.
There’s a lot of things that go on behind the scenes, but the beautiful thing is every time that bell rings it’s an appraisal in front of the world.
If we’re going off his last appraisal, the guy got hurt, showed grit, came back, won the fight. Knocked the former world champion out. Something Gaethje didn’t do just recently. Styles make fights, and I don’t like to play into that, but it’d be great if I brought it in there, touched him up and he quits.
Then I’m world champion, wow! How nice is that? But that’s probably not gonna happen, the guy just had an appraisal, showed he has a champion mindset, championship grit, and now he’s a world champion.”
Who do you think is the UFC’s best boxer? Let us know in the comments.
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