Khabib Nurmagomedov beat Dustin Porier to extend his MMA record to 28-0, forcing his opponent to submit in the third round at UFC 242 in Saudi Arabia on Saturday night.
“Why I wear this t-shirt? Because I know Dustin do a lot of charity stuff. Guys make me sure, I’m going to sell this t-shirt. All of this money I’m going to send to Dustin Poirier,” Nurmagomedov said.
“This is what I want, you know. Why we have so much respect between us before the fight? Then mys last fight, with this bullshit, guy, I have a lot of crazy stuff. But I want to forget everything.
“We show really what is this MMA. MMA number one thing is respect. When you come to gym, first thing your coach and everybody trains you, you have to respect him, you have to resect team-mates, coaches and you to keep clean your gym. Everything is about respect.” Nurmagomedov added.
Nurmagomedov put a lot of pressure into trying to send Poirier to the ground early in the first round, which he did. He took his back and looked for the strangulation, but his forearm was rather on the chin of his opponent.
Poirier came back to his feet without ever getting out of Nurmagomedov’s grasp, but the time was running out. The American obviously didn’t want to fall back into the same trap in the second round.
He began to go head first on his opponent and there was some good exchanges on both sides. However, create an opening for Nurmagomedov to send him back to the ground and again spent a lot of energy by defending himself.
Nurmagomedov briefly found himself in trouble in the third round as Poirier tried to complete a guillotine but he managed to slip out of danger and quickly reversed the situation, completing the bid in front of a clearly partisan crowd for the Russian.
Poirier had collected the victories in his previous seven matches in the octagon. He had six victories, while the seventh fight was canceled against Eddie Alvarez due to an accidental knee.
