What really mattered at UFC 236? Here’s a thing or five …

1. Poirier’s superpower? Resilience

For a while now Dustin Poirier has had the same tweet pinned to his Twitter page. It’s from November 2016, just a couple months after he was knocked out cold by Michael Johnson in a UFC main event, and it reads simply: “It’s all about perseverance.”

That’s not just a throwaway line for Poirier – it’s basically a philosophy. His whole career has been about perseverance, so it’s fitting that he’d have to gut his way through some rough stuff to claim a UFC interim title with a unanimous decision win over Max Holloway.

This wasn’t a domination by Poirier. This fight had some violent ebbs and flows, and there were points where he came close to losing it. But Poirier proves that sometimes you can make good things happen just through sheer will. That’s been the story of his career, so why shouldn’t it also be the story of his first UFC title victory?

1 3 4 …5