Watch: Dustin Poirier corners fellow Louisiana fighter AJ Fletcher for latter's UFC debut

Dustin Poirier made an appearance at tonight’s UFC Fight Night: Santos vs. Ankalaev event. ‘The Diamond’ was part of AJ Fletcher’s corner for the latter’s UFC debut, a welterweight bout against Matthew Semelsberger.

Fletcher lost the fight via unanimous decision. Regardless, the MMA community was set abuzz by Poirier accompanying fellow Louisiana native, Fletcher, to the octagon.

As featured in a YouTube shorts video posted by ESPN MMA, ‘The Diamond’ can be seen advising Fletcher between rounds during the grueling fight that went the three-round distance.

Watch Dustin Poirier's interaction with AJ Fletcher below:

Former interim UFC lightweight (155-pound) champion Dustin Poirier’s most recent fight was a third-round submission loss against UFC lightweight champion Charles Oliveira at UFC 269 in December 2021.

Following his loss to Oliveira, Poirier has been lobbying for a fight against Nate Diaz. Meanwhile, Diaz, too, has consistently maintained that he’d like to fight Poirier next.

The consensus is that if the UFC chooses to finally book the much-discussed Poirier-Diaz matchup, it’ll likely be contested in the welterweight (170-pound) division. Intriguingly, Poirier himself has lately been hinting at moving up to welterweight.

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Dustin Poirier on why he’ll never fight Colby Covington in the UFC

Dustin Poirier, who’s trained at the world-renowned ATT (American Top Team) gym for about a decade, has been involved in a long-running feud with a former ATT member. The individual in question is the former interim UFC welterweight champion Colby ‘Chaos’ Covington.

A longtime ATT member himself, Covington had disputes with several ATT teammates and eventually parted ways with the gym a few years back. ‘Chaos’ has been training at MMA Masters since 2020.

Interestingly, Covington has been campaigning for a fight against Poirier over the past several months, and even more so after his win over ATT mainstay Jorge Masvidal at UFC 272 on March 5th.

Covington has directed several extremely personal insults against Poirier, his wife, and his daughter, over the past several months. Nevertheless, at a UFC media scrum last month, Poirier asserted that he won’t fight Covington inside the octagon.

‘The Diamond’ explained that he doesn’t want Covington to financially benefit from facing him in a professional MMA bout under the UFC banner. Furthermore, insinuating that a possible street fight against ‘Chaos’ might land them both in jail, Poirier stated:

"No. I'll never fight [Colby Covington] in an octagon where there's finances on the line. If I'm fighting Colby, we're both going to jail. I'm going to jail…This is something different, you know. You will never see me fight Colby Covington in the UFC."

Watch the full interview below: