Dustin Poirier To Appeal No Contest Against Eddie Alvarez

Dustin Poirier wants what he feels is his, and he feels that he should have been deemed the winner after last night’s UFC 211 debacle.

Poirier collided with former UFC lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez as the headliner of the UFC 211 Prelims on FX and put on one heck of a fight. In the second round Poirier came close to finishing the fight, having Alvarez wobbled real bad at one point, however, “The Underground King” managed to land a few hard shots of his own and send “The Diamond” stumbling back as well.

Alvarez found himself delivering some knees to the side of Poirier’s head against the cage at one point, however, Poirier was deemed a downed fighter at the time of those strikes, making the blows illegal. The ref called a stop to the action and subsequently waived the fight off.

The end result was a No Contest after one of the best fights of the evening.

Per a report from FOX Sports, Poirier’s manager Robert Roveta of Denaro Sports Marketing has announced that they plan on filing an appeal to the decision with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation. Poirier and his team are hoping to get the decision overturned to a disqualification, giving him the win.

One key reason for the attempted appeal, other than earning a win over the former lightweight champion of the world, could be that Poirier lost out on his win bonus money due to the No Contest, which cut his paycheck by half.

FOX Sports analyst and former UFC fighter Brian Stann shares Poirier’s sentiments and believes that “The Diamond” should’ve been granted a disqualification victory:

“The fight was awesome. Dustin Poirier was putting on perhaps his best performance since he’s moved to lightweight. Maintaining his range, combinations, he hurt Alvarez bad. Then Alvarez showed off his heart. He was hurt significantly, fought his way back into this fight and then here come the knees. All clearly illegal. These are not the new rules, these are the old rules and it wouldn’t matter anyways,” Stann said.

“Now the decision is made to call it a no contest. A DQ [disqualification] and a no contest. No. These are illegal moves. That should be a disqualification, a win for Dustin Poirier, who was most likely up two rounds to none.”

Stann elaborated and said that he understands Alvarez may not have delivered the knees intentionally, however, the rules are in place for a reason – and if you’re going to break them there needs to be some consequences:

“Look I get it, Eddie Alvarez is in a fist fight, he’s not thinking through that, but regardless, it’s still a foul,” Stann said. “If you’re going to make the rule and it’s going to be a foul then treat it as a foul and say OK nobody wins.

“It’s not how it’s supposed to go.”