If we’re lucky here in the combat domain, there are a couple of times a year the fight world explodes with options. This weekend is one of those, as it’s wire-to-wire with brand-name action in both MMA and boxing.
We have UFC 318 taking place in New Orleans on Saturday night, a special swan song/house party for Louisiana’s own Dustin Poirier. We have Oleksandr Usyk’s rematch with Daniel Dubois for the undisputed heavyweight title taking place at Wembley in London. There’s the return of boxing great Manny Pacquiao and the top-five pound-for-pound mighty mite, Jesse "Bam" Rodriguez, as well as PFL’s big adventure down in South Africa, which is being dubbed PFL Champion’s Series 2.
What does it mean? The return of burgeoning female superstar Dakota Ditcheva.
It’s a weekend meant to spoil us.
Let’s launch right in with the most burning questions heading into this massive fight weekend.
1. What is the biggest fight of the weekend?
Petesy: It’s hard to go with anything else when the undisputed heavyweight title of the world is being contested. I will knock some points off for the situation Joseph Parker finds himself in after Daniel Dubois left him at the alter in February, but Oleksandr Usyk is box office these days. Add to that the drama of the first fight — the low blow (or perfect body shot) in the fifth round and Usyk’s finish in the ninth — and we have ourselves set up for a blockbuster. Oh yeah, and it’s happening at Wembley Stadium too.
C’mon!
Chuck: Yup, that is the biggest fight, and for me, Oleksandr Usyk has emerged as a kind of cult icon. At 38 years old, he’s a fleeting piece of art in this game. I want to soak in as much of his genius as we can before he heads off into the gloaming, though I hear you on the sympathy for Joseph Parker. It’s a hell of a thing to stand by when the ceremony should involve you.
What I dig about the setup is that it’s at Wembley Stadium. Last time we brushed Dubois to the side, he walked out in that same stadium, in front of nearly 100,000 riled-up spectators, and put it on Anthony Joshua. I’m very protective of the sense of shock that gave me. I don’t want to lose that feeling for as long as I watch fighting. It was something to preserve for the times when the fight game is being unkind, or untoward. I think about it when people hammer my X timeline with pics of Conor McGregor’s pe… oh wait, you know what’s a better question?
2. What is the best fight of the weekend?
Chuck: Daniel Zellhuber put on the Fight of the Year in 2024 against Esteban Ribovics, such a brutal encounter that we had to wait 10 months to see him again. Zellhuber's capable of a war with Michael Johnson, though I think he overpowers “The Menace.” Likewise, Kevin Holland is playing with some house money having already fought a month ago at UFC 316, which might lead to some zero-effs-to-give moments for his pay-per-view bout with Daniel Rodriguez.
But I’m not going off the grid to pick those, Petesy. I’m no hipster. It has to be Dustin Poirier and Max Holloway, right? If Poirier isn’t going out on his shield, why are we here? The stakes are so esoterically tied to his emotion and legacy and the past encounters, I just think he’ll be willing to give everything. And that’s Holloway's natural state of mind heading into a fight too, along with the motivation not to lose the series 3-0, so …
Petesy: I want to go with Dustin Poirier vs. Max Holloway’s trilogy fight, too, because they are both legendary fighters and rarely fail to deliver in terms of spectacle. As true as all those things are, did you read my answer to the first question? Usyk vs. Dubois 2 at Wembley Stadium for the undisputed heavyweight title of the world, a rematch to their controversial first meeting where it could be argued that a referee’s incorrect reading of a body shot may have cost Dubois the win … c’mon Chuck. It’s going to be crazy.
But Holloway and Poirier are right there with them. The Diamond’s final bow in New Orleans should be epic. By the way, I tried some of their famous boiled (broiled?) crawfish in New York.
Have to admit, not a fan.
3. Win or lose, what’s Dustin Poirier’s legacy in MMA? And what is your favorite Poirier moment?
Petesy: Honestly, it’s probably the second and third fights with Conor McGregor, because it showed his growth as well as the Irishman’s stagnation. It felt as though McGregor had handpicked Dustin because he felt he had some kind of mental edge over him. McGregor docked in Abu Dhabi in a superyacht while Poirier treated it like any other fight week. The second-round knockout felt as though Poirier was exercising demons in there. When they rematched five months later, McGregor turned from nice guy to villain, but it still didn’t deter The Diamond.
They were such legendary moments for him, performances that made him the man he is today. Regardless of what happens Saturday, Poirier walks away from the sport a legend. Meanwhile, McGregor is spending his 37th birthday sending, as you alluded to earlier, unsolicited pictures of himself in his birthday suit, lifting weights with his pe… never mind. Anyway, what do you think of Poirier?
Chuck: The McGregor sequel and subsequent rubber match were epic from a justification standpoint. When McGregor beat Poirier back during that magical run, it was like he was stripping the identity from his opponents. They were all lost to the Mystic Mac maelstrom, forgotten the moment the carnival left town.
Yet Poirier got his opportunity to even the score, and more than did so. He might’ve cast McGregor away for good. His legacy will be sturdy given the way he fought, his brutal honesty in the fight game, and his genuine fearless love of fighting. Maybe we joke about him pulling the gilly’s, but there was something about his heart that will stand the test of time. That Benoit Saint-Denis fight — my God, man. He was being fed to a monster. And he became the greatest matchmaking backfire of the year, biting down on the mouthpiece and finishing "BSD" to earn that title shot.
Diamonds are forever, Petesy!
4. If Dakota Ditcheva wins, is she the biggest star in women’s MMA?
Chuck: PFL doesn’t get the eyeballs the UFC does, and therefore the clout, but Dakota is perhaps that one fighter the UFC covets. Why? Because she has the air of something special. She had a chip on her shoulder for that fight with Taila Santos because her detractors accused her of fighting nobodies, and we saw what she did.
That was the revelation.
She’s 26 years old. Comes from a lineage, with her mother being a kickboxing champ. In 14 professional fights, only one has gone to a decision — a not-small, Ronda-esque detail. She is a polished public speaker with the country of England at her back. If she’s not the biggest women’s star after this fight, she’s setting a course to become it within a year.
Petesy: I think she is well on her way to becoming that, but I just don’t think she can claim that mantle while being a PFL fighter. Although she never said it specifically, you could feel the frustration she had earlier this year being a clearly brilliant fighter and not knowing what the promotion’s plans for her were.
She’s evidently quality, obviously marketable, but would I put her ahead of Kayla Harrison — another brilliant woman who needed to step into the UFC to truly realize her status as the world’s best — right now? Probably not.
Seriously, could you tell me who Dakota is fighting this weekend without checking Tapology? That’s a real problem in the star-building recipe and one PFL is struggling with.
Chuck: She’s fighting … is it Norma something? Aspen? Jennifer? Damnit, Petesy — I need to look it up.
5. What chance do you give Daniel Dubois in the rematch with Oleksandr Usyk?
Petesy: I’m a body-shot truther. I was shouting at my TV, adamant Dubois had landed that shot legally on Usyk in the fifth round of their first fight. The referee giving Usyk more than three minutes to recover from it completely destroyed any momentum the Brit gained before he was finished.
I still think it’s a long shot, but I definitely give Dubois a chance. He’s looked even more impressive against the likes Jarrell Miller, Filip Hrgović and Anthony Joshua since their first meeting, so he’s coming in with a lot of momentum despite his mysterious 11th-hour withdrawal from the Joseph Parker fight.
Chuck: It’s OK to be a body-shot truther. We need more of those. And the truth is, the asterisks on that fight are as big as small boulders.
I think Dubois has a pretty good chance here. Maybe it’ll be the magic of Wembley again, feeding his power. Maybe it’ll be the idea people are looking past him, as they did for the Joshua fight. But there was something about his poise in that Joshua fight that tells me the moment won’t seem too big. If he gets rolling like he did against Joshua, cracking the bigger shots and feeding off his own momentum, we might just have ourselves a scene out there in London, Petesy.
6. Why did Manny Pacquiao come back? And are we worried about him getting hurt here?
Chuck: He’s 46 years old and was just inducted into the Hall of Fame. He’s more of a political figure these days than he is a pugilist, and the game hasn’t stopped moving forward since he went away. His fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. alone generated something like $150 million dollars, which is the kind of purse no man has the strength to carry.
In other words, noooooo, Manny! Why?!
Petesy: I have absolutely no clue why he is coming back at this age and why I’m meant to be excited about it. Of course, I’m worried about him getting hurt — I guess the only consolation is that he doesn’t seem to share the same worry. God bless him, but this weekend it’s going to be the watching-through-the-fingers special for me, Chuck.
