Dustin Poirier put an exclamation point on his showdown with Michael Chandler at UFC 281 by finishing the fight with a rear-naked choke in the third round. But he still had a few more things to say after the bout was finished.
Cameras caught the lightweights in a verbal exchange just moments after Poirier secured the submission. While Chandler declined to repeat what was said in the cage, Poirier had no problem revealing the details of their conversation at the post-fight press conference.
“I told him this is my house,” Poirier said. “That’s what I told him. ‘This is my house.’ That’s it.
“And I told him he’s a dirty motherf*****, too, for putting his fingers in my mouth and blowing his nose. It’s all good.”
During his initial post-fight speech in the cage, Poirier said Chandler’s fingers were in his mouth as Chandler attempted to secure a rear-naked choke during a grappling exchange in the second round.
Chandler later acknowledged that happened, though he denied that it was done intentionally. He also addressed another foul after he was hitting the back of Poirier’s head with hammerfists on the ground, which earned him a warning from the referee.
“Yes, I will admit his mouth was open and my hand went inside of there and was on his mouthpiece,” Chandler said. “He bit down, I was trying to pull it out. It wasn’t as though I was trying to pull it out, and he was biting it and I couldn’t get it out. It was more just the angle. I mean you’re getting pushed up against the cage.
“Then when Dan Miragliotta was saying I was hitting him in the back of the head, I’ll have to go back and watch it to be honest with you but I know I was catching his ear, or at least in my mind I was catching his ear. So we had that kind of conversation. You all know I’m not a cheater. I love this game. I don’t cheat.”
Poirier obviously didn’t agree with that assessment.
“It was definitely intentional,” Poirier said. “That’s just fighting.”
Later in the fight, Chandler was seen blowing his nose, spraying blood on Poirier. The former Bellator lightweight champion again didn’t deny his action, but he promised it wasn’t meant as some kind of disgusting message.
Instead, Chandler said he was just trying to clear his airways after Poirier mangled his nose at the end of the first round, which resulted in a buildup of blood.
“I got a rocket up my nose right now to stop it from bleeding,” Chandler explained. “If I wanted to breathe, that blood needed to come out. So it wasn’t a malicious, weird thing, but it was definitely like a, ‘Sorry you’re down there, but I didn’t create gravity.’”
It seems the entire exchange left a bad taste in Chandler’s mouth, because he wasn’t all that happy with how Poirier conducted himself after the fight.
“I did go over there, I’m a man of my word,” Chandler said. “I said win, lose or draw, I would shake his hand, and be respectful after. Something was said and I didn’t really like it so we’re still friends/enemies/whatever we are.
“It wasn’t as graceful in victory as I would have liked. Don’t have expectations of other people, they’ll always let you down.”
Judging by his reaction, Poirier isn’t losing any sleep over the situation, and now he’s just anxious to finally put Chandler in his rearview mirror once and for all.
“It’s over,” Poirier said. “It’s whatever.”
