A potential firefight between elite lightweights is on the main card Saturday night when Dustin Poirier exchanges violent pleasantries with Michael Chandler at UFC 281. Read on for our Poirier-Chandler UFC picks and predictions.
A former interim-lightweight UFC champion, Poirier was never able to remove that “interim” tag. He first lost a title bout to retired division overlord Khabib Nurmagomedov, followed by a failed attempt to wrest the title away from Charles Oliveira. Sandwiched between those bouts, “The Diamond” prov ed his bonafide status as an elite 155-pounder by notching a pair of victories over former two-division champion Conor McGregor, and a dominant win over Dan Hooker.
Like Poirier, Chandler is a certified killer at 155 pounds. After multiple title triumphs in Bellator, Chandler was immediately thrown into the deep end upon his UFC debut, racking up scintillating stoppage victories over Tony Ferguson and the aforementioned Hooker. However, he took losses against fellow top-five lightweights Justin Gaethje and then-champion Oliveira.
While an emphatic, violent stoppage victory wouldn't necessarily vault the winner into an immediate title bout, it would definitely put him on the short-list (especially Chandler, since he never faced Nurmagomedov, whose style closely matches current champion Islam Makhachev).