Former UFC lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez and Dustin Poirier went toe-to-toe at last weekend’s UFC 211. The fight was cut short in the second round by a string of knees from the former champion. Many of the night’s spectators viewed the strikes as illegal blows to a downed opponent.
However, the fight was officially decided as a no contest. The official decision has since drawn some controversy among fighters and fans. Now, UFC commentator Brian Stann has come forward with his thoughts on the fight. In spoken on the FOX post-fight show, transcribed by MMA Fighting, Stann explained:
“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. 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.”
Then, Brian Stann broke down what he believes to be the underlying issue. “Here’s the overall frustration: We set new rules, we barely ever use them, we go to different cities every damn weekend and these fighters have no idea what knees are allowed, what positions they’re supposed to be in, what point scores we’re going by. I was in one country, in Fortaleza in Brazil, and it was a mixture of the old and the new rules! I asked the referee, ‘do the fighters know that?’ He said, ‘well, the three bouts that I’m reffing, they know that.’ Come on! We’re better than this. Decide on rules and go with them so that these athletes know. And the referees, they should be the best ones to know. Get the rules right. I don’t buy that that should have been a no-contest. That should have been a win for Dustin Poirier and what makes me super upset is that we continue to have controversy over these rules. We have to fix this.” He said.
