Dustin Poirier announces retirement fight in home state at UFC 318 against Max Holloway

Val Dewar

•
Dustin Poirier announces retirement fight in home state at UFC 318 against Max Holloway image

Dustin Poirier celebrates winning the UFC interim lightweight title by beating Max Holloway at UFC 236.

Dustin Poirier is one of the most well-respected and entertaining fighters in the UFC today.

Having teased that his next fight would be his last, fans have been speculating for months on the what opponent the Louisiana lightweight legend would face in his swan song.

Today, Poirier appeared on the Pat McAfee show on ESPN to reveal the answer: Max Holloway.


“I’m gonna lay the gloves down in Louisiana where it all started for me, the whole journey started there, and I'm just honored to have the UFC on the same page, and the state of Louisiana on the same page. I didn't know if it was all going to come together, but it did.”

The trilogy bout between the two will be for the BMF belt, which Holloway won off of Justin Gaethje with one of the greatest knockouts of all-time.

Poirier defeated Holloway in the previous two bouts, one having been when Max was 20 years old, the other being a generational war for interim UFC lightweight gold at the peak of each man's powers.

Despite coming off of recent championship losses to two of the top pound-for-pound talents in the sport, Islam Makhachev and Ilia Topuria, Poirier and Holloway have still proven to be capable of great performances.

Most importantly, both are stars who have never been in a boring fight, which seems to be the primary criteria to fight for the ‘BMF’ championship, inaugurated at UFC 244 by Nate Diaz and Jorge Masvidal.

Dustin had essentially the same criteria for the final fight in his own legendary career.

“Max is a legend, I said legends only, there is not a better guy I could think to fight in my retirement fight. I was his first fight in the UFC, back in 2012, and he's going to be the my last fight in the UFC.”

The fight will go down at UFC 318 at Smoothie King Center in New Orleans, Louisiana on July 19th, 2025.

Val Dewar

Val was initiated into Steelers Nation from the moment he was born — his first memory is a game vs. New England from when "Slash" was QB — and doing sports writing has always been a dream career for him. In 2022 he broke into the industry by writing about combat sports for Cageside Press, and now has the opportunity to continue that work with TSN as an MMA writer, as well as get his feet wet on the Steelers beat.