Make no mistake: Dustin Poirier is still at the top of his game. Even at 36, he remains among the most dangerous fighters in the standing UFC and on the carpet. He has won Conor McGregor, Michael Chandler and Benoît Saint Denis in recent years.
So why, despite a classification n ° 6 between the light weights and a headliner at the UFC 318 against Max Holloway in New Orleans on Saturday, does he plan to remove the gloves for good?
Everything comes down to the family.
“Me and my wife have been together for a long time, before fighting, so she’s in all this trip with me,” Poirier told NBC News last week. “She asks me to stop fighting for a long time, just like my daughter.”
After 30 victories in 40 fights, a CV mainly composed of total wars which made him a favorite of fans, Poirier followed their advice. Louisiana, a native of Lafayette, who will come out in front of her hometown crowd and will face himself for the last time, ending a legendary career.
Poirier said that his long -term health was a major factor.
“I want to be there for my long-term family,” he said. “I want to watch my daughter get married and always be there for her, not only physically, but mentally too. I want to leave with my faculties. It’s not good for you. To be kicked and Seat on his knees and hitting the head for 18 years is not good for you.”
Poirier said he was officially reconciled with the decision after his last fight against Islam Makhachev in June 2024. In this fight, a fifth round submission defeat, he suffered his third defeat in a championship. He previously fell on Charles Oliveira and Khabib Nurmagomedov, respectively, with the belt on the line. The UFC will generally not give you photos during a title.
He would probably have needed another victories sequence to recover, he said, and at his age, with wear on his body since he started fighting at 17, it does not seem to have happened to soon.
Faced with Holloway on Saturday for the UFC “BMF” belt – a title distinguishing the “most nasty motherf in promotion – is a nice consolation price for years of exciting fighting. He could go to the octagon in front of his hometown crowd, beat another favorite fans and leave with gold around his size.
It would be the perfect end for one of the most legendary careers in the UFC.
Poirier pointed out how important it was to get out of sport before sport made it come out. Too many fighters over the years have entered the cage after their peak with declining skills and athletics and suffered damage that has changed life.
He said he always feels good enough to compete at a high level, that’s why it was a difficult choice to leave now.
“I didn’t have to leave this,” he said. “I choose to get away, and it’s very important to me.”
Unlike most fighters, Poirier was frank on prevention of neurological problems. He told NBC News before Makhachev’s fight, which he debated retirement, partly “to take care of my brain health”.
A year later, it’s still in the lead.
“This is not something I thought when I was young at the start of the twenties or in the middle of the twenty,” he said this week. “This is something that I aged in sport, I started to do things and notice things and do my research and grow and do it is not good for you. I’m not saying no [become a fighter]. I just say to take care of you.
Poirier has changed some of his habits to help in this area. He now consumes healthy fats, fish oils and turmeric, takes creatine, uses hyperbarical chambers and has an intense fight limited before fighting.
His opponent on Saturday was also frank on the subject. Before his fight on the title of the UFC 308 against Ilia Topuria in October 2024, Holloway spoke of the importance of brain health.
“You get only one brain. Once this thing begins to deteriorate, it’s not like anything else where you can take it back,” he said. “Be smart, go see specialists, go see the doctors, go research your own brain health and take care of yourself. In the end, that’s what it is. I don’t want to be a vegetable when I get older. “
The UFC has taken steps to help athletes protect their brains.
According to the promotion, a five -step protocol will be used to determine if a fighter is able to return to action after a concussion. Each fighter also has an immediate complete examination of a doctor from the Commission and a UFC doctor after his fight. They can be required to undergo a CT brain scanner, MRI brain analysis and / or neurology monitoring assessment.
The promotion also supported the study on the health of professional athletes during the Cleveland Clinic. Since 2011, more than 900 athletes have participated in tests that will help determine the long -term effects of repetitive head trauma and factors that put certain individuals at a higher risk of developing chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). The UFC contributed more than $ 2 million to the cause.
“If you had a way to identify people at risk of these long -term effects, then hope is that you could treat them early or advise people,” said Dr. Charles Bernick, founder and principal researcher in NBC News. “The kind of athletes empowered athletes when active on their own brain health, so that they can make decisions. It is for me the most exciting things.”
The professional study of brain athletes remains a current project, said Bernick. He aims to work with current and retired fighters for at least five years.
“This gives us a real opportunity because some of the athletes who started as active athletes then retired during the study period,” he said. “So we can somehow have a prospect of what is happening once a person stops fighting, stops being exposed to everything that he is exposed … and trying to understand why some people have continuous problems, even if they are no longer exposed, and [why] Other people seem resilient. »»
Although no study was carried out only on the MMA or the boxing fighters, there were former NFL players.
In February 2023, the CTE Center of the University of Boston announced that after having studied the brain of 376 former football players, 345 (91%) returned with a diagnosis of CTE.
Like football players, fighters know the risks of a physically demanding sport. No one understands this better than Poirier.
“Each fight, each combat camp takes something that I can never recover. Pieces of me that I can never recover,” he said. “I’m going to leave a piece of myself there next weekend. It’s just something with which I reconciled. But fights is just something I do. I am a father and a husband and a business owner and a brother and a son. I am a lot of other things. The fight is just something I do. ”
