COCONUT CREEK, Fla. – Dustin Poirier’s boxing coach Dyah Davis sees his star student delivering another stoppage of Conor McGregor.
Poirier (27-6 MMA, 19-5 UFC) tied the score at one-a-piece when he avenged his 2014 TKO loss to McGregor by stopping him at UFC 257 in January. The momentum is certainly on Poirier’s side, as the pair are set for their rubber match in the main event of UFC 264 on July 10, which takes at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
With McGregor (22-5 MMA, 10-3 UFC) having only competed three times in the past three years, Davis thinks Poirier’s recent cage time and experience gives him an advantage going into the trilogy.
“Dustin is active, I think that definitely plays to his favor,” Davis told MMA Junkie. “Conor was out of the game two, three years so ring rust can possibly play a factor in it, but listen, you’re a fighter. Conor is a fighter first and his job as a fighter is to be in the gym on a constant basis. You should be training, you should be sharpening your tools and that’s what Dustin does. Even if he doesn’t have a fight scheduled, he’s still in the gym, he’s still training, he’s still doing what he’s supposed to do. He’s still being responsible as a fighter.”
Poirier had plenty of success landing his leg kicks in the rematch, where he was able to hinder McGregor’s movement, setting his strikes up top. It’s a game plan that worked to a tee and Davis thinks the trilogy will play out in a similar fashion.
“I take this approach as if a lumberjack, we’re in a forest,” Davis said. “The idea is to chop the tree down from the bottom and that’s exactly what we did. It’s a fight. So we look for any weaknesses that we could take advantage of and that was one of them. So we capitalized and we moved on from there and ended up finishing him with strikes.”
He continued, “I think it’ll play out similar to the second fight, maybe a little bit longer. I see us executing and getting a KO victory in the third round.”
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