Dana White's handling of Poirier-Ferguson is Embarrassing
Many fighters throughout their tenure in the UFC have complained about poor pay.
Most of the time this is comes off too many fans as a tiresome act where the fighter seems to take more heat than the promotion.
However, when former interim lightweight champion Dustin Poirier announced that his potential bout with fellow former interim champion Tony Ferguson wouldn't happen at UFC 254 because of a contract dispute, many fans and media alike took the fighters side in the dispute.
Why wouldn't they? Throughout his tenure Poirier has been almost a guaranteed great fight every time he steps in the octagon as proof by his eight fight of the night awards (six of which have come in his last eight fights).
UFC President Dana White confirmed that the fight had fallen through last week and that the promotion was looking for a new opponent for Ferguson.
After Ferguson had voiced his support through social media for Poirier, White was asked on Tuesday night about the prospective fight again.
"There's a lot of different ways to turn down a fight." White said. “Negotiating yourself out of one is one of the ways you can do it. So for whatever reason, he didn’t want to take this fight. Only he knows that.”
Does anyone really believe that Dustin Poirier is afraid to fight Tony Ferguson?
Poirier has fought a bunch of fights against many guys people would rank among the pound-for-pound best, Khabib Nurmagomedov, Max Holloway, Conor McGregor and Justin Gaethje to name a few.
No one is buying that Poirier is looking for a way out of this fight with Tony Ferguson and the UFC's attempt to push this narrative to win a PR battle is embarrassing quite frankly.
It's not the first time the organization has used this as a negotiation tactic and it has worked before, Cris Cyborg being a good recent example of this.
It's just a bad look for the UFC to unfairly criticize one of its most prized commodities.
Dustin Poirier is one of the guys on the roster the UFC should be looking to overpay if they have to as the man has been a fan friendly fighter his entire career and a great ambassador for the sport through his charity work.
The UFC needs more Poirier's on their roster, but unfair comments to the media is not how you get them.
So to make a long story short, just pay the man.
