Max Holloway happily accepted the opportunity to serve as Dustin Poirier’s final opponent for his retirement fight planned for UFC 318 even if he would never put himself in that same position.
The event taking place Saturday in New Orleans was built around Poirier and his desire to compete one last time before calling it a career. There have been tribute videos made, fighters already paying homage to Poirier prior to the event, and there’s even a rumor that the former interim lightweight champion
has rapper Lil Wayne ready to perform a song and walk him to the cage.
While Holloway appreciates the celebration being built around Poirier’s final fight, he doesn’t want the same thing when it’s time for him to retire from the sport.
“To be honest when it comes, it’s probably just going to be one of those things where I’m going to be in there after the fight, tell you guys I’m done, I’m over,” Holloway told MMA Fighting. “Thank you for the love and put my gloves down and walk out of that octagon. With all this grand gesture and everything, it’s cool and it’s nice but knowing me personally, I wouldn’t even tell [my family] actually. I don’t think I’d tell anybody. I’d just spring it upon all of them and just surprise them all, surprise everyone. Just be like yeah guys, I’m done and I’m over. ‘F’ you, ‘F’ you, you’re cool, I’m out.
“All jokes aside, I’d probably keep it a secret. I’d probably keep it a secret and do it. In the heat of the moment, you don’t know how you feel in certain moments so it would probably just be something, I did something after the fight and be like I’m over it, announce it then and there. My wife might get caught off guard, too.”
If there’s an argument against building an entire show around someone’s retirement, it’s that Poirier might feel like he already has one foot out the door before he ever sets foot in the octagon on Saturday.
On the flipside, Holloway is looking at UFC 318 as a chance to avenge two past losses and potentially add a win over a future Hall of Famer as he seeks a lightweight title shot in the near future. Those are two diametrically opposed mindsets going into such a huge matchup but Holloway won’t bank on Poirier letting anything slip just because this is his final fight.
“You saw the promo. I saw the promo for this fight,” Holloway said. “We heard the words Dustin is saying. This is his last fight. We are in his hometown so I’m leaning more towards the way that Dustin wants to leave with a bang and even if the bang is he’s on the bad end of the bang, he’s going to leave it with a bang.
“At the end of the day, I’m getting ready for a Dustin Poirier fight times 20. You could look at it the other way. Like I’m looking at it like ‘I could get a title shot.’ He could be looking at it like, ‘This is the fight I want to be remembered for, this is my last fight. This is what I want to be remembered for so I’m going to go out there with guns blazing.’ At the end of the day, I think there’s going to be two sides of the sword for sure. We may never know. What I like to say, we have to find out Saturday night.”
Not that this fight needed any extra hype, but Holloway isn’t oblivious to the fact that he’s getting a rare opportunity to send Poirier packing while also getting back a win on him after two previous losses. He’s never been a fan of making excuses, but Holloway debuted against Poirier on short notice back in 2012 and then jumped in the fray for the rematch when the UFC offered him a chance to compete for the interim lightweight title in 2019.
This time around, Holloway has spent months preparing for his permanent move to 155 pounds and he expects to show Poirier something he never saw before in their previous encounters.
“I made my announcement on my YouTube channel saying that I’m going to be staying at [155 pounds] after the last fight. We’re here,” Holloway said. “With that, everybody keeps bringing up the second Dustin fight and they compare myself to the [Justin] Gaethje fight at UFC 300. It’s just time. It was just time. We just had more time. More time to get ready for that 300 fight. With the Dustin second fight, it was just you get offered something like that, you don’t turn it down. I guess it’s just like what this [‘BMF’] belt says, anybody, anywhere, any time. That’s just what it is.
“It’s an honor to fight a future Hall of Famer again for the third time. The only thing on my mind is not trying to go freaking 0-2 in trilogies. At the end of the day, it’s an honor to share the octagon with him for a third time. He’s an animal but while he’s riding off into the sunset, I’m still going to be here. So I’ve got to stake my claim Saturday night.”
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