Poirier vs McGregor: That Beautiful Right Hook
If Dustin Poirier bore any grudge about the way things went the first time he met Conor McGregor, he didn’t let it distract him for a moment on Saturday night. Going into the hotly anticipated rematch most were willing to admit that yes, Poirier had only gotten better since their first outing and was a terrific hitter, but had he done enough to catch up to the razor sharp striking of McGregor? The fight was not the obvious blow out that some are making it out to be in the aftermath, but Poirier’s decisive knockout victory in the second round was one which displayed his maturity and improvement throughout.
The first fight had gone so badly for Poirier because at that time he was a primitive competitor who fought in a simple back and forth, running in swinging and covering up when it was his turn to receive. Poirier’s answer when McGregor fired was to put up a high guard with the lead forearm to block the left straight. McGregor quickly picked up on this and, keeping Poirier on the back foot, started swinging wide around the side.
The change that the past seven years have made on Poirier was immediately apparent as he sparred for openings with Conor McGregor on Saturday night. When McGregor was throwing, Poirier was looking and reacting. When Poirier was throwing, he was watching McGregor and trying to anticipate returns. There was no longer the clear divide between offence and defence, and Poirier was not desperate to get back on the lead, he was instead involved in a give and take with McGregor.
Part of the intrigue of this bout was that in a sport that is filled to the brim with southpaws, Poirier and McGregor have both fought very few. Conor McGregor does all his best hitting with his left hand, either as a lancing lead or as a fading counter. Dustin Poirier does much of his best hitting with his right hand, shifting into orthodox stance and pitching it over the opponent’s lead arm as he does so. Both men rely heavily on bringing something unusual against orthodox opponents. Normally Poirier and McGregor are the exotic part of the match up for their orthodox opponents but in facing each other they both were tasked with something a little different.
Typically when two southpaws meet there is more opportunity to be creative with the lead hand. In an open stance match up the lead hands can be used to check and control each other and mitigate much of the jabbing, but when both fighters are southpaw you are back to the closed stance match up of an orthodox vs orthodox fight and each man’s jab is lined up to fly straight up the centre line while their lead shoulder shields them from the opponent’s rear hand.
One of McGregor’s habits which we have touched on quite a bit in recent years is throwing his left hand with his shoulders far forward of his hips. It is a strange way to punch but it allows him to add some range to his blow and catch opponents when they think they are safely beyond reach. Most famously he dropped Eddie Alvarez with this leaning blow, but he was even able to score it against Floyd Mayweather without the kind of repercussions you would expect for something that any boxing coach in the world would tell you off for doing. However, by throwing the same leaning left hand against a fellow southpaw McGregor was exposing himself to the threat of a short counter right hook—something which Nate Diaz had caught him with a good deal and which Poirier immediately began seeking. Flicking out the jab, leaning back in anticipation of the return, and slapping McGregor across the chin in the early going, Poirier quickly established the counter right hook as a real threat.
When McGregor got too ambitious opening up on Poirier along the fence in the first round, the right hook was there as a catch and pitch return to break off McGregor’s assault and remind him that he was trying to get cheeky with one of the division’s most dangerous punchers.
Crucially, to find the counter hook Poirier lowered his guard and watched for McGregor’s blows. He drew out left hands and tried to catch McGregor in overextension and sometimes it didn’t work. Over the past few years we have studied Poirier intently and tried to walk the line between praising his defensive improvements and painting him as some sort of defensive genius, but those moments as McGregor cracked him showed exactly what has been so hard to articulate. By opening up his guard and learning to use his shoulders, elbows and the top of his head to catch blows, and to see blows coming, Poirier has become a much harder man to hit clean and to hurt. It was when Poirier had his hands high against McGregor the first time that every good left hand that snuck through wobbled him to his feet. With his hands lower and his eyes on McGregor—and, of course, seven more years of training and fighting—Poirier was completely unfazed by the left hands because he could see them coming.
Waiting for the Shift
Aside from the ease with which Poirier shook off McGregor’s blows, the biggest surprise of the fight was how Poirier used his shift. As we mentioned before, against orthodox fighters Poirier throws his left, shifts into exchanging range and bombs them with overhands from his new orthodox stance. He tends to lead with his head and carry his right hand low as he shifts in. His lead shoulder shields him from the orthodox fighter’s right hand, but against McGregor it seemed like he would be wading into that fade-away left hand from the open side.
Instead, Poirier seemed prepared for this. The first time Poirier shifted in with his left, McGregor looked to return but instead of winging in the overhand right, Poirier ducked in on McGregor’s hips and met with little resistance as he ran through a neat little outside trip. Poirier only used the shift a couple more times in the fight but each time he did, McGregor had no idea how to react.
It is of course worth noting here that McGregor’s shoulder strike was on excellent form and—were the pubs open—I would expect a glut of street fight videos where the parties run up and start throwing shoulders from kissing distance. The difference between McGregor’s shoulder strike and just about everyone else who is going to try it was that it came from the head post: a position that most fighters feel comfortable punching or kneeing from anyway. The genius of it is that like an elbow in relation to a punch, more of the bodyweight can be employed tighter space and McGregor gets to keep the underhook if he can’t reclaim the head post.
The Calf Kick
The calf kick has stolen much of the attention in this bout for good reason: McGregor was largely undone by it. Not just the calf kick but the counter low kicking game as it currently stands in MMA. While McGregor’s presence has loomed over MMA for the last five years, it is worth remembering just how much this sport has changed even since he won the featherweight belt. In McGregor’s rapid assent through the rankings he wasn’t much tested by low kicks and it was always a question mark because of his lengthy stance and reliance on movement. An injured knee led to McGregor’s worst striking performance, against Chad Mendes, who lit the Irishman up with telegraphed running swings. For McGregor’s in and out style, fighting on the hair trigger, movement is life and a busted up leg is death.
From the moment that Poirier first jarred McGregor’s stance with the low kick, it became a concern for McGregor. McGregor’s main method of dealing with low kicks has always been to “get one back” with a good shot, and then return to applying pressure and backing them up—the part of his game which makes kicking a non-issue against most opponents anyway. It was in this that you saw one of the key differences between the calf kick and the traditional low kick. In a traditional low kick, the fighter can deepen their stance and step into the blow, allowing the kick to ride up the quadriceps into the hip pocket, where they may catch it and drive through for a good punch or a takedown or something less to the point.
The small difference that kicking just below the knee makes is no matter how the opponent takes the kick, it won’t ride up to the hip. So when Poirier began connecting the calf kick, and McGregor started trying to punish him by catching it, McGregor was having to reach out in front of his own shin and lean forward to pick the foot up.
Even when McGregor caught the leg, the foot tended to be between him and Poirier, leading to sequences of him chasing Poirier around on one leg. He couldn’t step up the inside of the caught leg and simply blast Poirier.
McGregor’s tendency to lean already existed, but reaching forward to pick up the kick, and trying to punch from the end of Poirier’s leg both exaggerated this even further.
The end of the fight came in a flurry as McGregor backed onto the fence, but the turning point came as Poirier tried to time a kick as McGregor entered. The kick didn’t buckle McGregor’s stance this time, but McGregor was full committed to the left hand, with all of his weight out ahead of his right foot. As Poirier brought his foot down from the kick, he threw the counter right hook and McGregor punched himself right onto it. The low kick into the lead hook—a classic Andy Ristie look and one that hurts a lot of the world’s best counter punchers by punishing their well trained reaction.
That is the crux of it: Poirier’s advantage was that he had been there, fighting. He had been training full time at American Top Team, home of the calf kick. But more than that, he had spent the years since their first fight learning to box and then ran into the issue of counter low kicks when Jim Miller chopped his lead leg up. It’s not just McGregor and Poirier—Max Holloway, Calvin Kattar, anyone who has a boxing centric attack at the highest levels of MMA today is learning that they have to be smarter with their entries. Some kick more, like Holloway. Others will fight shorter in their stance to be nearer to the check and further from their jab—like Jose Aldo. Many would do well to look at Ilias Ennahachi’s use of false entries to draw out low kicks at air. But McGregor came out, met with the counter low kicking game, and tried to jam a square peg into a round hole.
Is McGregor washed? Was he motivated? Was Poirier always better than him and just messed up the first time? It’s all pointless to ask because while the two men’s styles and demeanours are chalk and cheese, and Poirier doesn’t have the look and philosophical quips of McGregor at his most Bruce Lee like, Poirier has taken McGregor’s role. It is Poirier who will not just fight anyone they put in front of him but everyone with as little downtime as his body and family will allow. It is Poirier who is arriving on fight night with new elements to his game each time and improving visibly from fight to fight. And, hopefully, it is Poirier who will be remembered for a terrific victory over a dangerous opponent, rather than being swept aside in favour of some narrative about Conor McGregor defeating himself.