Lafayette’s own Dustin Poirier will make his return to the octagon for a premier fight at the legendary Madison Square Garden.
According to numerous reports, Poirier’s first fight since his submission loss to Charles Oliviera at the end of 2021 will be against Michael Chandler as part of UFC 281.
This announcement comes after Chandler mentioned that he doesn’t want to fight the Lafayette native and questioned if Poirier is even a draw in an interview on Ariel Helwani’s MMA Hour.
“Is Dustin a draw? I guess he is the No. 2 guy. … But he’s kind of just stayed at No. 2 and I don’t know how active he’s gonna be,” Chandler said. “But I did see that he tweeted that I was saying everybody else’s name but his, as if I didn’t want to fight him because of technical reasons but it was more that I forgot about him, to be honest with you.” (h/t Bleacher Report)
UFC 281’s card looks to be filled up with this recent addition and is going to be one of the most anticipated nights of the year with Israel Adesanya defending the middleweight championship against Alex Pereira and Carla Esparza defending the women’s strawweight championship against Zhang Weili as the headliners.