Pressure Makes Diamonds: Post Fight Breakdown of Dustin Poirier vs Anthony Pettis

Pressure may make diamonds, but it doesn’t do so well for Anthony Pettis. In their lightweight match up last Saturday, at UFC Fight Night 120,  Dustin “The Diamond” Poirier defeated Anthony Pettis by submission. While there were a lot of freak occurrences that may or may not have swayed the outcome of the fight, the perspective game plans for either fighter were clear from the start. Let’s take a look at what each fighter is good at, how the other tried to shut those things down, and in the end, why Poirier came out on top.

Anthony’s style is a dynamic one. Full of flash and surprise, he generally depends on distance to give him the space he needs to pull off his highlight real kicks.




Being someone who isn’t known for great wrestling, he supplements his game with aggressive and slick guard attacks; using it to threaten submissions off of his back if and when he does get taken down.


The trouble with a game that relies so heavily on kicks is that you require two things to do it. The first thing is space, and the other is forward momentum. Kicks in their nature are longer strikes. This can offer an advantage as they allow you to strike from a safer distance. However if someone feels they have the stronger punching game they need only step inside of the kicking range. The kicks will no longer fit inside the gap between fighters, and the kicker is forced to punch. As far as forward momentum goes, very few people can kick effectively while moving backwards. In order to swing the kick with power you usually need to step or move slightly forward to generate the initial momentum. We’ve seen most of Pettis’ recent losses come as a result of his opponents using good old fashion pressure fighting to limit Anthony's space.

By pressuring Pettis, he is forced to move backward to find the range he likes. Except eventually he’ll run in to the wall. It which point his opponent can either choose to step and force him to trade punches, or step all the way in and force him to wrestle. Neither of which are his forte.

This is precisely what Dustin aimed to do. As Pettis circled away from Dustin’s power side,  Poirier simply cut him off and forced him slowly back to the cage. As soon as Anthony’s back foot got near the fence (and his retreat was closed off), Poirier was either wrestling or boxing. No kicking for Pettis.




Now if we look at Poirier’s game, we’ll see it’s generally all about his accurate and well timed left straight. It’s simple and straight forward but great timing is hard to beat. In the opening moments of the fight it seemed Pettis’ plan was to stick to the basic, yet effective principle of circling away from the power side. Seeing that Poirier wanted to pressure him he kept circling away from Dustin’s left. He would occasionally circle back to the power side, attempting to bait Poirier into cutting him off on that side, and in so doing bring Poirier towards his power kick.



This part of the plan was foiled though when Poirier's defense was too tight to let kicks through, and eventually his pressure took them away all together.

The second part of Pettis’ attack was to go to that slick guard game that we mentioned earlier. Constant attacks from the guard of Pettis had this fight filled with scrambles and near submissions. Numerous time we saw Poirier close to being choked.



What was interesting here was that these attempts were not necessarily shut down but intentional counters done by Poirier. Rather, the damage that Dustin had inflicted earlier in the fight had Pettis such a bloody mess that the blood seemed to help Dustin slip out of chokes. You might say that Dustin got lucky here, but it was his well executed game plan that allowed him to get Pettis so bloody in the first place. He just didn’t realize how much those well place elbows were going to help him later on.

Dustin was on his way to a decisive victory when the finish came by usual means. Poirier had the back of Pettis. Pettis tried to spin around and get on top, but the resulting torque apparently caused Anthony to injure his rib. He subsequently tapped and the fight was over.



All in all it was a great fight, and a great win for Poirier. Excellent use of pressure, cage wrestling, and ground and pound brought him one heck of an outcome.  I’m looking forward to seeing what’s next for him. Hopefully more well thought out and technical performances like this one.

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Until next time,

NA