Dustin Poirier on Beating Conor McGregor, Calf Kicks, Possible 3rd Fight

Jurogan's experience, you saw the collapse of DC and in detail, uh, the second

fight

versus the first

fight

with Connor, is very interesting, but I see a lot of people talking strange things about how the leg kick didn't knock him out, what happened like that DC says in the detailed breakdown uh he

kicks

Conor's

calf

and Conor steps back and his leg goes and DC says well that's the kick you know hurt his leg or whatever but when he went after it that kick, he ducked. to catch the foot and I threw a hook and I was changing position, so I threw a cross with my backhand that hit him well and that's when he took a step back and got hurt.

I think that's a detail people lack that right hand, well, you. You certainly landed a lot of solid punches in that fight, but there is no doubt that the leg kick was with the right leg raised, but the detail I was going to get over is that the difference between the first fight and the second was that you were landing . Strong leg

kicks

in the first fight, but you landed them on the thigh and then switched to the

calf

. What a crazy difference that calf kick has made in mma over the last few years. Yes, it's really crazy, it's a man and no.

It doesn't take many and it doesn't require that much commitment. You know, a kick in the thigh. You are rotating your hips Muay Thai style. You are really established in your position. Lashing this calf kick. You can move it. a jab and he just caught the top of the calf and it's so wild that this kick was almost ignored. I always give credit to Benson Henderson because I think he was the first guy to start using in the UFC, but for some reason he didn't. it has the same impact, I just don't know, I would have to go over some fights with huge legs, I'm sure it gets harder, I'm sure it starts, yeah, but for some reason it didn't stop guys with calf kicks , but then sometime in the last, what was five six years or something?

Maybe not even that far back maybe not even which is crazy, yeah, which is crazy. I can't think of anything, not a single technique that That revolutionized the sport in that way and then like I said about the calf, you can't take many because the swelling has nowhere to go, that's why it's so painful and debilitating, your nerves and your foot stopped working with you. It's, it's a bad thing, yeah, there's no meat there either, I was explaining to someone, I'm just saying karate, cut your arm right here, where the bone is, it hurts just to do that, now imagine someone kicking that and that's it when you get a kick in the calf there's nothing there, there's no meat and even when you turn your shin out to check it, you still get it, it's still bad, yeah, well I noticed that in the fight with Conner, yeah , could be seen somewhere in the first round when it started. realizing that oh this is a real problem yeah and Conor doesn't have the ability to change stances or if he does he doesn't, yeah he definitely didn't do it in that fight and it was only going to get worse, that was the second. round you know we had three more rounds 15 more minutes where I cut that leg off yeah if we do it again it'll be interesting to see what it does uh different in preparation or defending you know well you were such a different guy.

In the second fight, you know you weren't getting weaker to get down to 145 pounds in the first place, yeah, I mean, you were 145 grand. How hard that cut was, it was horrible and made me hate the process because of my quality of life. Suck, you know training camps were torture, you know, I'd walk around 190. I'd go up to 190. I'd go up on such a crazy night, yeah, oh my gosh, you go up to 190 and you go down to 145. 45 pounds let me tell you this when I went up to Swanson in London, England, I took him on short notice and I just won a fight before and it was around Christmas so I was eating and when they called me they asked me my weight and I told them.

They weighed 170, but I weighed 187 or something and it was on very short notice, so my team and I flew there, um, I'm 30 pounds heavier when we landed, you know, fight week, check out Jesus Christ, oh God. mine, it's so crazy that they review. your weight fight week when you show up to make sure I was uh I was 176 and I was 45. oh my gosh yeah but you did it how did you do it? Don't know. I almost died, I don't know. I feel like the weigh-ins were a little blurry. I don't like my memories to go beyond the weigh-ins.

It is not good for you. Do you think it makes sense for you to fight Conor for the title? No I dont think so. So do you think it should be that Oliveira Connor has been absent so long in his last two fights at 155 that he lost, so you can't put him there for a title fight? How could you justify doing that when they have when you have guys? like olivera but if khabib retires and they say hey this is for all the marbles you're not going to say no what are you going to say are you going to say I'm a purist what are you going to say no I don't know if Dana puts you aside, he says, he doesn't have why make sense but let's make some money yeah we're fighting for the belt yeah you gotta fight for the belt yeah we'll see what happens man I think there's going to be something soon cause we gotta keep it moving , they are not going to sit around forever chasing Khabib and the division has to move forward.

It's interesting that by the time that low calf kick is coming to prominence and you know. This is also the time when Conor started to step away from the sport, he took some time off, he fought in boxing, you know, then he came back and had the fight with Khabib and then he came back and had the fight with the cowboy, the kick in the the calf was never in play in any of his fights, but if you look at it stylistically and this is one of the things I love, the DC details he does on espn, it's incredible, but when he broke Conor's heavyweight in the right leg, he leans like that all the time and puts in a lot. of weight on that right leg when he pauses in that southpaw stance and since he also fights a lot of southpaws, he opens up that big kick that's such a big weapon and sometimes, like you said, that wide stance too mm-hmm It's just It's hard to control the kick from that wide stance, yeah, you know, it's a crazy stance for anything other than calf kicks, it's a great stance, I mean, it's very good at moving and covering distance with that stance. , he is very karate, a great counterattack like you.

See the karate bounce back and forth to a boom attack um and he and he has an amazing left hand where you know he's knocked out a bunch of guys with that counter with that pull too and that's what we worked on. The great thing about training camp with my boxing coach Davis is that the pool also prompts him to throw the pool too, yeah the only time you use one of the times you caught him several times but one time we caught him with that counter right hook and You pointed it out like he understood you, yeah, that felt good.

I just felt like he was grabbing the wheel and starting to make her understand. Oh, this guy has changed. You know this is not the same fight. DC also collapsed. At the end of the first round, you punched him lightly in the stomach, like it was a little bit, hey man, good round, good game, good round, there was a little bit of cleverness there, I didn't do it, I didn't do it in the moment. I didn't do it like you were thinking about it, yeah, it just happened naturally. Yeah, what did you say to him at the end of the first round?

You said something when we were bumping shoulders. I was having fun asking them. I think I said to them: How would you like that collarbone? Just playing. You know, it's funny. How did you like that collarbone? I like that collarbone. Has anyone ever said that in life? That might be the first time a human being has said: How did you like that collarbone? I delivered one. I think that probably made me recover better. Although you think about all the phrases people have said throughout history that could affect that collarbone. Yes, there may be two or three other humans who have ever said those words together?

How did you like that collarbone? Yes, that's not, that's not that's not the word you say, you often use a very unusual phrase, how would you like to really like that collarbone? Oh man, then he started breaking me up with him, yeah, and well, he sure had more pop, the cowboy fight was crazy, he was able to do that kind of damage, yeah, he broke his nose, maybe yeah, sure, I mean, I was bleeding from the nose right away, that was crazy. A lot of people didn't even understand what was going on, I wonder why, because when he started hitting me with them, I naturally felt like I turned my head on the other side, yeah, here it is, obviously it's something he's practiced.

Yeah, one of the things about this fight is that you look like the bigger guy. I'm pretty sure I weighed more than him. Yes, you seemed like it. You look more muscular. He's, you know, he's muscular, but his waist is small. I just built different and will probably walk around heavier than him. Do you feel like now, after that first fight, you got his number or after the second fight, it's uh, it's fighting, man? I don't think you ever will. make adjustments, yes, he will make adjustments, it will be a completely different fight, since the first in the second was different, the third will also be different because I am also going to make adjustments, I have to change it. and keep things fresh and keep him guessing, yes, now, ideally, when would you like to have the rematch?

June July June July because I'm still around. My wife's birthday is coming up, so we're going somewhere for a couple of days like it's not already. I'll do it if I get the call and it's time to go to work, I'll lock myself in training camp, but I'm not ready to go back to Florida a month after the last fight and then shut down for another 10 weeks or whatever. we'll see if they call me I will but I would prefer it to go a little further let me enjoy my life uh at home in Louisiana before I go back to florida so if they call you and say man you'll do it but would you prefer if yes, I will do it any time.

I'd be surprised if they decided to do it in May so close after that, ko, I just don't think that's the case. wise, yeah, it's early, yeah, and obviously I mean, honestly, it's not a lot of time to adjust and work on what we need, what he needs to work on for the calf kick or what I want to change, you know. , we are. I just came back to camp getting ready to fight, we're not really evolving outside of training camp for me, I learn things in training camp because it's constant every day under pressure, but it's the time between camps like now when I'm in the gym having fun rolling and doing light kickboxing exercises with my friends where I feel like the big gains come when I'm having fun because I'm kind of tunnel vision and boot camp.

I'm showing up, okay, let's fight, okay. I'm not having fun and exploring different things. Catch new episodes of the Joe Rogan Experience for free only on Spotify. Check out JRE's video catalog on Spotify, including clips. Easily switch between the video and audio experience on Spotify. You can listen to the JRE on it. background while using other apps and you can download episodes to save on data costs, all for free. Spotify is absolutely free. You do not need to have a premium account to watch new episodes of JRE. You just need to search for JRE in your Spotify app.

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