DUSTIN POIRIER HAS promised to derail the Conor McGregor hype train if he is given the chance.
The riled-up American threw down a challenge moments after McGregor’s first-round TKO against Diego Brandao in Dublin on Saturday night.
The win saw McGregor take his UFC record to an unbeaten 3-0 and break into the top 10 of the featherweight division for the first time.
The O2 card sold out in record-breaking time, was the best show yet on the UFC’s Fight Pass subscription service, and pulled in 600,000 terrestrial viewers on 3e.
McGregor boasted afterwards that he would be a world champion by the end of the year but Poirier, ranked sixth, hit back and said: “I will be the first real fight he’s ever been in.”
“[McGregor’s] name and the featherweight title should never come out of anybody’s mouth,” he told the MMA Hour. “I can’t believe the hype he’s getting.”
Poirier suggested UFC 178 in Las Vegas on 27 September as an ideal date for their grudge match.
And he warned McGregor’s swelling Irish fanbase: “Build him up. It’s going to be that much sweeter when I stand over him. This guy is not who you think he is.”
He added: “I feel like he’s disrespecting the whole featherweight division, and nobody’s going to step up and put this guy down and shut him up?”
“The UFC is my house. I built where I’m at from the ground up, man, and nobody’s going to come in here walking around talking that trash.”
Listen to Poirier’s interview in full on the MMA Hour here >
