Dustin Poirier Needs Time Off Before Returning To Alvarez Rematch

Dustin Poirier is willing to run it back against Eddie Alvarez for his next bout, but he needs little time to recover from their initial meeting first.

Poirier and Alvarez met on the headliner of the UFC 211 preliminary card on FX which ended with quite a bit of controversy. In the second round Poirier seemed to have Alvarez in trouble before “The Underground King” countered with a big shot of his own, wobbling “The Diamond” as well.

Although both men were rocked, Alvarez was able to get Poirier on the ground against the cage, but he landed a pair of illegal knees which caused a break in the action. After some discussion, the bout was waived off as a no contest despite many believing that Poirier should’ve won via disqualification.

Both men expressed interest in running the fight back after the call was made, but Poirier is still disgruntled by the entire scenario (quotes via MMA Junkie):

“I’d like to beat him again, unless the UFC moves forward like I beat him and matches me up with the next fight that I would have got,” Poirier said. “That win Saturday night would have put me in talks of the title. (Alvarez) is ranked No. 3 – he was one fight removed from being the champion.

“There was still a lot of fight left for me to shine, and I was just starting to show it. So the whole situation sucks.”

Initially both men showed great respect for one another after the bout inside the cage, but Alvarez soon took to Twitter to accuse “The Diamond” of wanting a way out regardless of the outcome. Regardless of the former lightweight champ’s words, Poirier knows he was going to get his hand raised if it hadn’t had been for Alvarez’s illegal knees – and he thinks his opponent knew it too:

“I look at it as a win,” Poirier said. “I know, and Eddie knows, that I was going to win that fight. I don’t care what he says by saving face or talking trash on Twitter. Whatever he has to make himself believe to get himself excited about a rematch, or feel good about getting back in there with me, go ahead and do it.”

“I’m not going to rush back into a fight right now and just jump onto the next card, because that was a hard shot,” he said. “I want to recover. I just can’t jump back into training camp right now. That was a good shot I took. I think it was a harder shot because I wasn’t ready for it.”

When it’s all said and done, Poirier has faith that the UFC will get the call right as it pertains to who they’ll pair him up with next:

“Usually, the UFC has a great track record of making something right if they feel it was wrongfully done, so we’ll see what happens,” Poirier said.