Originally Posted by
Wanna Bet On It?
LOL. That still doesn't address the fact that all of his opponents have been one-dimensional.
Grispi has terrible stand up. Garza has terrible TDD. Young & Holloway have weak ground games. He worked Grispi on the feet. He worked Young, Holloway & Garza on the ground. Bravo.
He was getting worked by Grispi on the ground, Young (and arguably Holloway) on the feet. He got worked by Castillo in the WEC. Sure Castillo is 10 pounds heavier and Poirier was pretty green, but Danny isn't a world beater at 155 - he's a middle tier talent at best. I'll cut Dustin some slack for that loss but Poirier's looked great because he's been opportunistic about taking/keeping the fight to where he wants when he's in trouble against one-dimensional guys.
When he fights someone who's as skilled a counter-striker on the feet as KZ 2.0 has shown and has very good TDD fundamentals, good scrambling, aggressive GnP & unconventional submissions, it means Poirier better finish the fight early because his workrate drops off precipitously and KZ will have the distinct cardio advantage as this fight goes into the third round and beyond.
This isn't a linear stylistic matchup. You have to tease out a lot of impressions from limited footage of two young fighters who grow considerably between fights. But I think KZ has matured more than Dustin has in the past year or so and the shock factor that oblivious bettors (read: drones who can't project fighters' growth & stylistic matchups and then just blame shit on their fighter crapping the bed) will be saying "holy shit, I didn't know he could do that" will more likely be said about Chan-Sung Jung, who only has footage of a brief KO to show for his improvements at KTT/TAM over the past year.
Poirier is a highly skilled FW. I've given him his props in my video. But he doesn't beat the KZ 75%+ of the time in a 5 round fight.
Does Dustin win this 50% or slightly more? Probably... But only ignorant "gurus" bet "winners" at -325 while disregarding the probability of it being a close to 50/50 5-round fight versus at least a 75/25 split as the odds suggest.