Of course, every time I get beat out there, I want to avenge those losses. I'm sure every fighter does.
— Dustin Poirier
I feel like I can submit Khabib, but feel like I'm going to stop him. I don't know how it's going to happen, but I'm either going to knock him out or I'm going to submit him. I'm going to finish Khabib Nurmagomedov.
I've never pulled out of a fight. I've never missed weight.
I've put it all on the line every time, win, lose, or draw, and that's what I want to be left behind in my legacy.
I want a rematch with Cub Swanson, I think I deserve to be 100 percent and fight.
Everybody has their own path. Everybody peaks at different times.
I don't see myself ever going up to 170.
I feel like my wrestling and jiu-jitsu is so underrated.
If you move in and out, throw shots and use angles and the guy's feet are planted, you look a lot better.
I was a born fighter before I got technical, and that's still in me.
You can't just go in and say, 'I'm going to be tougher that you,' you know? Heavy bags are tough, but I've never been beat by one.
This is a business. I'm a professional athlete. This isn't, 'poke somebody and start a street fight.'
I'm familiar with adversity.
I'm not a frontrunner. I'm a complete fighter.
The champs are the guys who can do it the best, to lock it in for 25 minutes and do what they plan to do.
All weight cuts are hard.
Any time Nate Diaz fights, I'm tuning in, I promise you.
I don't want to have an asterisk next to my accomplishments for the rest of my life. I don't want everybody to say, 'interim champ' every time someone says Dustin was the champion.
I try to work on the small things.
I've always fought the best guys.
The side of town, the side of Louisiana that I grew up on, there's a lot of poverty.
I really work hard to stay in great shape and make weight.
Adversity teaches a man a lot about himself.
I'm never going to go down to 145 again.
My goal is to prosper and be a world champion and make money and retire and say I did it.
I have mouths to feed and I want big fights!
I feel like I've always been a great fighter but I'm learning the patience part of it and not getting overwhelmed with emotion and adrenaline and going out there and brawling like a maniac.
Korean Zombie beat me, and I was prepared that night. He beat me, he beat me that night.
Norman Parke needs to stay off of Twitter before he gets himself in a fight he can't win.
I just want fights like that. Fights that get me excited. Fights that are going to be exciting.
Just because I haven't fought wrestlers doesn't mean I'm not wrestling in every camp.
Destiny doesn't make mistakes.
I'm not a small guy.
My whole career, the ups, the downs, the victories, the defeats, the lessons I've learned and kept rolling, that's what's made me the fighter I am today.
I want to entertain the fans and put on great fights and have 'Fight of the Nights' and have exiting matchups, but at the same time I want to be the undisputed world champion.
Every fight, every camp I learn about myself and I get better. But every fight I get better.
I never took the easy route.
I want the title. But these hands are working hands, and sometimes you've got to get them dirty.
Nothing in my life was ever easy.
When your body quits on you, it doesn't matter how mentally tough you are.
Years and years ago, like in 2006, my wife, I didn't have a car, she would drive me to weigh-ins, we would sleep in broken-down motels and I would fight the next day. Just me and her.
I need to celebrate life because I'm in a good spot, I work hard, and I am happy with who I am and happy with what I do for a living, and sometimes I just focus and overwhelm myself so much with the fights and getting better, that I just need to slow it down and enjoy life and enjoy training.
I don't usually talk crap about guys.
You have to be tough. All these guys are tough. But at some point, you have to outsmart and outhink and outplan these top fighters.
This isn't a Toughman competition; you don't just fight everybody because they want to fight.
If I would have thought like fans think, I'd be broke and brain dead and fighting everybody every weekend.
They had to re-shape the head of my femur back round. They had to trim my hip socket up a little bit. I had a lot of extra bone growth just from years of stressing it out. Because of that bone growth, it caused an impingement in my hip, which tore my labrum off the bone.
I have a pretty high fight IQ.
I've been the underdog my whole life.
I want to fight guys I'm excited to watch fight.
