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Yesterday was a big day for the UFC, as they officially announced that the third fight between Conor McGregor and Dustin Poirier would take place at July’s UFC 264 show.
With a third UFC fight between Conor McGregor and Dustin Poirier now signed, it’s worth asking exactly why McGregor has been attempting to drum up animosity between the two.
After all, The Notorious One is already the UFC’s biggest star, and any pay-per-view involving him will likely draw millions of dollars.
However, there may definitely be some reasons why he’s begun to poke at Poirier. Here are three of them.
#1 Conor McGregor may genuinely be angry with Dustin Poirier
The main reason for some animosity between Conor McGregor and Dustin Poirier has exploded in the past week, surrounds a spat over Poirier’s Good Fight Foundation.
According to Poirier, McGregor had promised to donate a $500k cheque to the charity – which benefits deprived communities – prior to their fight at UFC 257.
Poirier claimed that The Notorious One had not followed through with this promise, claiming that he’d instead simply stopped any communication regarding the issue.
McGregor was furious with this claim, tweeting that Poirier had “smeared his name” and stating that because of this, he was now unwilling to fight The Diamond at UFC 264.
Of course, in the days that have followed, cooler heads have prevailed and the fight at UFC 264 is now official.
So what happened to provoke McGregor so badly?
The likelihood is that he was genuinely angry with Poirier, an idea that would seem to be backed up by The Diamond issuing an apology for going public with the spat.
After all, while he’s come under fire for various controversial incidents over the years, McGregor remains arguably the most popular fighter in the UFC.
And for a rival to suggest that he’s dodged a promised payment to a charity isn’t a good look, however you view things.
With this in mind, the truth may well be that McGregor’s animosity towards Poirier isn’t to sell tickets – it’s for real.
#2 Conor McGregor wants to get inside Dustin Poirier’s head as he did at UFC 178
While McGregor may be genuinely angry at Poirier for bringing their charity spat into the public eye, the truth behind this animosity may be a little sneakier.
It was notable that in the build to the fight between the two men at UFC 257, Poirier didn’t seem at all intimidated by McGregor, who also didn’t attempt to make things as personal as he tends to do in his fights.
And so when UFC 257 came around, Poirier looked calm and collected and produced one of the best performances of his career to TKO McGregor in the second round.
This was a stark contrast to their initial clash at UFC 178 back in 2014.
Prior to that fight, The Notorious One had clearly gotten into Poirier’s head. He labeled The Diamond a journeyman and claimed he’d KO him in the first round.
And when the fight came around, Poirier simply wilted under pressure and ended up being easy pickings for McGregor, who moved to 4-0 in the UFC with the win.
So this attempt by the Irishman to drum up more animosity between the two going into UFC 264 may well be his attempt to get into Poirier’s head again.
By making their feud personal, McGregor may believe that the cool and calm Poirier might be replaced by a more reckless version, or better still, the meek version we saw at UFC 178.
This fight at UFC 264 is likely a must-win for McGregor, and so this animosity could simply be his way of maximizing his chances of winning.
#3 Conor McGregor may believe the fight can break the UFC’s pay-per-view record
Another reason Conor McGregor may have attempted to make his feud with Poirier personal is to drum up interest in UFC 264.
In turn, that should theoretically elevate the show’s pay-per-view buyrate and thus provide McGregor with a far bigger paycheque, too.
If that’s the case, then his behavior makes total sense.
McGregor has drawn over a million buys on pay-per-view on seven occasions during his UFC career.
However, it’s notable that his fights with Eddie Alvarez and Donald Cerrone – which lacked any kind of personal animosity – drew markedly less than his bouts with Nate Diaz and Khabib Nurmagomedov.
And while the Khabib fight at UFC 229 obviously had more significance due to it being a UFC title bout, the second fight with Diaz at UFC 202 largely meant nothing.
Instead, a fight that didn’t even seem to have a lot of buzz going in was made into one that drew 1.65m buys on pay-per-view after a wild press conference that saw the two fighters throw energy drinks at one another.
With this in mind, is it any surprise at all that McGregor would attempt to make his third fight with Poirier personal?
The fight is already huge – UFC 257 drew 1.6m pay-per-view buys. And so if The Notorious One could capture a similar feeling to the one he had prior to that second Diaz fight, there’s every chance that UFC 264 could well break the UFC’s 2.4m pay-per-view buyrate record.
