MMA's Marvin Hagler: the footwork of Dustin Poirier

Breaking down the unique footwork that Dustin Poirier uses to put the hurt on his opponents.

With UFC 302 right around the corner, I had two options of what to write about this week: the champion, Islam Makhachev, or the fan favorite contender, Dustin Poirier.

It wasn’t a particularly hard choice. On the one hand, I’m a lot more comfortable writing about striking than I am grappling, and Dustin Poirier is much more the striker of the two. And on the other hand, I have a pretty good idea of who’s going to win this fight. I mean, I saw Poirier’s fight with Khabib, Makhachev’s predecessor—and we all know about Dustin’s crippling guillotine addiction. So… we’ll probably just talk about Islam Makhachev next week, after the dust has settled.

It also occurred to me that I just haven’t written much about Dustin Poirier over the years. Which is weird. The man has been fighting professionally since 2009, and fighting in the UFC since 2011. And he has improved dramatically over those 15 action-packed years. He started as a young, anxious tryhard, talented and dangerous, but reckless, overburdened by expectation, eager to run headlong into all the hard lessons this sport had in store for him.

Eventually, though, those lessons stuck. Since 2016 or so, Poirier has shown himself time and again to be one of the craftiest, most resourceful, most resilient fighters in the game. Defense, patience, counter punching—just about every skill you might associate with experience, Dustin Poirier has it in spades.

One thing Poirier has always had, however, is power. And he has developed a unique way of delivering that power, a particular style of footwork all his own. Poirier is one of those fighters you could reliably identify by silhouette. He moves like no one else, finds angles like no one else, finds counters, covers distance, and generates two-fisted knockout power like no one else. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today: the weird (and effective) footwork of Dustin Poirier.

The suicide shift

First we’ll look at a move that Poirier pulls at least once in just about every fight. I noted above that Poirier has learned to be less reckless over the years—but he remains a fundamentally risky fighter. It’s just that the risks tend to be more calculated now, tempered by the icy calm Poirier spent his formative years having beaten into him.

Here is a perfect example: a shifting combination just made to be countered—and designed to punish anyone who tries.

A shift is a maneuver in which the fighter reverses the position of his feet while advancing, known in non-fighting circles as “walking.” The shift Poirier pulls here, however, is more of an all-out sprint. Basically, he overcommits on a huge punch, to the extent that the only way to stay upright is to bring his left foot forward and leave his southpaw stance behind.