At UFC 302, the headliner will settle every question, rumor, prediction, and bet. Thursday’s heated face-off between Islam Makhachev and Dustin “The Diamond” Poirier is certainly a preview of the fire these two men will bring to the octagon, but this time, security won’t be there to pull them apart. In the co-main, one of the UFC’s sharpest boxers in Sean Strickland squares off with Paulo “The Eraser” Costa in what promises to be an all-out war.
Rising stars like Jailton Almeida, Grant Dawson, and Roman Kopylov round out the card this Saturday, June 1, with the early prelims kicking off at 6:30 p.m. ET, followed by the prelims at 8 p.m. ET and the main card at 10 p.m. ET, available for streaming exclusively on ESPN+. If you still need to sign up for ESPN+, you can take advantage of a great offer for a 1-year subscription and this weekend’s PPV for only $134.98.
How to Watch UFC 302: Makhachev vs. Poirier
ESPN+ UFC 302: Makhachev vs. Poirier
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UFC 302: Full Event Details
Islam Makhachev collides with Dustin Poirier in the main event, with the lightweight title on the line. In the co-main event, former champion Sean Strickland looks to get back on track with a win over Paulo Costa, and whether or not that happens, it is almost certain that both men will be wearing a mask of blood by the end of the night. Heavyweight Jailton Almeida will look to again show off his phenomenal grappling against the freestyle wrestling of Moldovan powerhouse Alexandr Romanov, and Kevin Holland will test the striking prowess of Michal Oleksiejczuk, a vicious finisher boasting several KOs, including a fight-ending body shot against Gian Villante. final bout between two light heavyweight powerhouses, this ridiculously stacked card is full of singular fighters matched up at razor-thin odds. Roman Kopylov will do everything in his power to take the zero from an undefeated Cesar Almeida, who faces his biggest test to date.
Here is the full list of fights on Saturday (the matches are subject to change):
UFC 302 FIGHT CARD
- Islam Makhachev vs. Dustin Poirier (Lightweight Title Bout)
- Sean Strickland vs. Paulo Costa (Middleweight Bout)
- Kevin Holland vs. Michal Oleksiejczuk (Middleweight Bout)
- Niko Price vs. Alex Morono (Welterweight Bout)
- Randy Brown vs. Elizeu Zaleski Dos Santos (Welterweight Bout)
- Cesar Almeida vs. Roman Kopylov (Middleweight Bout)
- Jailton Almeida vs. Alexandr Romanov (Heavyweight Bout)
- Grant Dawson vs. Joe Solecki (Lightweight Bout)
- Phil Rowe vs. Jake Matthews (Welterweight Bout)
- Mickey Gall vs. Bassil Hafez (Welterweight Bout)
- Ailin Perez vs. Joselyne Edwards (Bantamweight Bout)
- Mitch Raposo vs. Andre Lima (Flyweight Bout)
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Annnnnnnd Nowwwww…..How to Watch UFC 302
Dustin Poirier is one of the first fighters who impressed me as a fan. I watched the documentary Fightville (2011) over a decade ago, which features Poirier and delves into his backstory. Over the years, I saw him rise through the ranks of the UFC, where early on he struggled due, at least in part, to fighting at featherweight instead of lightweight. Poirier used to walk around at 190 pounds and slim down to 145, which diminshed his strength, stamina, and durability.
Documentary footage showed him during a weight cut, where he narrated his almost hallucinatory level of hunger, alternating with segments of him ferociously hitting pads in the gym. I don’t know if it was the way they shot the footage, edited the sound, or what, but I remember watching that footage and thinking, “Holy sh*t, who’s gonna be able to take this guy out?” It seemed as if standing within range of this guy was just asking for a cracked rib or broken orbital.
But I probably wasn’t reading that scene with analytical eyes. I was being entertained, and watching it for sheer presence, confidence, determination, what a thousand self-help books and more than a few beer commercials have called a “warrior spirit,” or “fighting spirit.” What beer actually gives a person is called “liquid courage,” which is a mere shadow of the energy that possesses a true fighter, like Poirier, whose peak performance is made possible by him being willing to die at any given moment.
Dustin “The Diamond” has a rare thing. He doesn’t have the perfect record of a Khabib or even the near-perfect record of Makhachev, and he has never held an undisputed title. But he nonetheless carries the status of what Dana White called, to use the technical term, “a f*cking legend.” In Poirier’s recent, beautiful finish of Benôit Saint-Denis, he reminded those of us who have been watching MMA for a very long time that the fighting spirit manifests most powerfully in a kind of poise, balance, awareness, and readiness to strike with precision, speed, and contusing follow-through.
For instance, what marked Conor McGregor’s iconic early performances was not simply the knockouts, but the lightness, the infinite ease with which he moved, the speed and power in his left hand generated from a state of relaxation so complete, so serene that it was hard to believe he was in a televised fight in front of a roaring crowd, under blinding lights and awash in a billion distractions.
Great fighters like Conor, Poirier, and Makhachev, cultivate a purity of focus that matches perfectly the clarified space of the octagon. Beyond the eight walls of the cage percolates every breed of distraction invented by humans over the past few millenia: faces of the famous, athletes and rock stars and politicians and other VIPs, some bedecked in diamonds, not to mention bikini-clad Octagon Girls, your past rivals and future opponents in outlandish silk shirts and furs, advertisements on banners and on giant screens. You hear rabid fans shouting for your coronation or your demise in thirty-five languages, booming music, Buff’s voice growl-shouting your name, the referee’s command to fight, and then—many fighters say, once the fight begins, they hear nothing.
Poirier is only 35, a young man by 21st century standards. But the fight game is an ancient thing, and so Poirier is certainly on the far side of his career as a warrior. What Poirier showed in that firefight with Saint-Denis is how deeply experienced he is, even beyond his years. When commentators and analysts talk about “experience,” they mean a range of things, but the most profound meaning of that term relates to conditioning. And I don’t mean cardio. The best fighters, through experience, can turn off the instinctual reactions of their nervous and endochrine systems.
They re-route the “fight or flight” response and transform it into a refined fuel, an energy they can direct, so that the customary “adrenaline dump” at the beginning of a fight fuels the exhibition of their honed skills, rather than derails their technique in a mad rush of haymakers and panicked handfighting. They condition their nervous system so that when they are caught in a body triangle, they don’t writhe—they relax. When they walk out to the Octagon, all the aforementioned distractions and stimuli send their body into overdrive. By the time the cage door closes, the best will have mastered that energy, releasing the jerky tension it causes in their muscles, so they can move their body toward a natural rhythm and, hopefully, a state of flow.
On a more technical level, everyone who knows anything about Poirier knows that his best bet is his boxing. He flatlined Saint-Denis with stiff, short, powerful shots in the pocket. He has wins against Michael Chandler, Justin Gaethje, Eddie Alvarez, two wins over Max Holloway. He is not afraid to throw blows in a phone booth, and he’ll need that fearlessness against Makhachev, who has morphed into a fearsome striker. Still, Makhachev’s coaches say he hasn’t yet shown his highest potential on the feet. American Kickboxing Academy (AKA) mainstays like Josh “The Punk” Thomson have been lukewarm in their reactions to many of Islam’s wins, steadily repeating on podcasts that Islam hasn’t shown in the cage what he shows every day in the gym, hasn’t performed in a way that reflects how truly far ahead he is in comparison to the rest of the lightweight division, the top ten of which is a murderer’s row of veterans and rising stars.
Poirier has said that if he fails on Saturday, he may retire after the fight. Some say you shouldn’t talk about retirment prior to a fight, that it will linger in your mind in the heat of battle, and when more and more of your body and brain wants to quit, you’ll think, “I’ve accomplished as much of my dream as I can, and now it’s time to ride off into the sunset.”
Whereas a fighter with much still to accomplish even after this fight cannot give up in the middle of it, because it would be tantamount to giving up on their dream. Another way to look at it, though, is that Poirier, in believing that this may be his last fight if he loses, actually has nothing to lose. And there’s an old saying that is no less true for being old—there’s nothing more dangerous than a man with nothing to lose.
Well, nothing except maybe Islam Makhachev. He hails from the mountainous fighter factory that is Dagestan, Russia, a place that has produced some of the most devastating grapplers the MMA world has ever seen. They don’t just take you down and hold you down; they rag doll you, hit you with inside and outside trips so quick you don’t know whether—and now, you’re mounted, before you can even figure out what happened that put you on your butt. And you’re not just mounted. That would be workable, at least, because from there you can shrimp, or blast up with your hips, somehow get to a butterfly guard, or scramble your way to the cage side and build your base.
But as I said, you’re not just mounted. They’re controlling your wrist with their right hand snaked around your armpit, preventing you from raising yourself up or even getting balanced on the ground. Now they’re hitting you with left hooks to your face. And, even more devastating than all this, your legs are tied up like a roasted turkey’s, as Makhachev has them crossed and tightly tucked within his own, making his base double as a zip tie on your entire lower body, a part of your body that, as it turns out, is pretty important if you ever want to stand up again.
Now, in the first meeting between Volkanovski and Makhachev, Volk showed that Islam is certainly not invincible, and that a strong, methodical fighter on the ground can get up if they are patient and strategic. And Dustin has shown a good ability at fighting the hands and avoiding the rear naked choke on the ground. The odds are certainly stacked against Dustin, but he can win this fight. He is as dangerous as he has ever been.
However, if he wants to preserve his puncher’s chance for a victory, he must not jump the guillotine! He did it so many times in his previous fight—even though he has not a single finish with that submission—that it endeared him further to fans. He continued to do it even after his coaches explicitly forbid it in their speeches between rounds, with Poirier on the stool, hilariously responding, “I think I can get it.” There is now a t-shirt available from Parish Ink, with Poirier’s smiling face encircled by the words, “Don’t Be Silly Jump the Gilly!”
As funny as all this is, Makhachev is the last person you want on top of you after an aborted guillotine attempt. The undisputed lightweight champion lost his UFC debut but has been undefeated since then, with several flawless victories along the way. In his last fight, he headkicked Alexander Volkanovski into the shadow realm, but more memorable, to me, is when he finished Drew Dober. Remember that? The record says it was an arm triangle submission, but the arm wasn’t even locked up very high. From half-guard, Islam just pressed his shoulder into Dober’s neck with such force that the latter tapped—there were so many muscles popping out of Makhachev’s back, it reminded me of when Corey Feldman spilled water on Gizmo in Gremlins.
In the co-main event, we have a middleweight clash between former champion Sean Strickland and Brazilian bruiser, Paulo “The Eraser” Costa. Strickland’s at an inflection point, having just given up the belt in a decision to Dricus Du Plessis. A loss to Costa would put Strickland in limbo, for he would be out of title contention, but also not old and worn enough to move into full-blown gatekeeper status. The opposite is also true: a win would keep him hovering in the upper realms of the middleweight division, perhaps just one more win away from a rematch with Dricus for the strap.
For Costa’s part, he showed even in defeat at the hands of former champion Robert “The Reaper” Whittaker, that he is now more patient and measured as a striker, all while retaining his ferocity and skill. As Belal Muhammed once tweeted about Ngannou during the Stipe fight: “Omg calm Francis is the scariest guy in the world.” Well, Costa’s not quite that scary, but he is scary enough that Strickland better keep his eyes wide and his fight IQ turned all the way up. If Strickland does anything foolish, one of Costa’s kicks could send his body falling, right along with his ranking.
Of course, in the UFC, there are always gears grinding away in the background, too, beyond the matchups playing out on any given weekend. I realize that the Conor McGregor vs. Michael Chandler fight is still weeks away—don’t fret, there will still be plenty more to say in the days leading up to it—but Conor is already talking, already shaping the way the world sees this week’s fights. Conor’s single-handed economic impact is also already landing on large and small scales alike, from the $20 million in ticket sales already generated by his event, to the rapid climb to 10 million views garnered by a video of him partying in a club in recent days.
Some analysts—who must all necessarily become part-time celebrity gossip mongers when a Conor fight comes along—are saying the video shows that he’s undisciplined, that he’s going to blow it in the fight. Others joke that he has discovered the perfect training camp routine, or that he’s simply following the Ryan Garcia method, which seems to have worked against Devin Haney, depending on how this whole failed drug test or contaminated supplements controversy plays out.
While we’re on the topic of the biggest star in the sport, allow me to remind you that Dustin Poirier beat Conor twice. That’s no small feat. But Poirier has also lost twice in fights for the undisputed belt. This is further proof (as if we needed it) that the fight gods are cruel, capricious, callous, and all the other adjectives that begin with “c” and describe the way that every fight, whether a short-notice, catchweight slugfest, or a tactical battle built up over the better part of a decade, is a contest that occurs on a knife edge. Step off one side, and you land on the ground, then raise your gloved fists in victory. Fall to the other, however, and you don’t land at all, but descend through a bottomlessness so absolute that this version of you can never return, like the dead men in that short story by Borges, their corpses falling eternally through the air, distintegrating into nothingness as they plummet.
All jokes and surreal fiction aside, Conor caused a small storm on the internet this week by alleging that Makhachev has a staph infection, supposedly visible on his leg in a fight week promotional photo. I don’t know if anyone has ever added up all the fights canceled due to staph infections, but that nasty little bacterium has quite a record, likely having taken out more fighters than Jim Miller, Andrei Arlovski, and “Cowboy” Cerrone combined (who are technically the top three in the record book). Off the top of my head, I’m thinking of Sean Brady’s bout of septic bursitis, not to mention Benôit Saint Denis half-looking like Hellboy with a little staph horn popping out of his forehead before the Poirier fight.
Then there’s Paulo Costa, of course, who once famously posted pics of his infected elbow that were quite high on the scale of gnarliness (it’s like the Richter Scale, except it’s for injuries and wounds, and extreme sports moves, rather than earthquakes. Though, technically, an earthquake of any notable strength tends to be pretty gnarly, too). Last year, Tim Schultz damn near had to have his leg amputated after a raging staph infection, combined with some medical mistreatment, ate away the flesh of his foot down to the bone. But Google those pics with caution, my friend, as they broke the gnarly scale when they were first unblurred.
The staph infection possibility, for all of Conor’s histrionics, could be a real factor in the fight. The infection itself, combined with the aggressive regimen of antibiotics typically used to treat it, can really drain the tank of even the best conditioned fighters. This is one of the reasons why the pay-per-view of a main event is never predictable, no matter what the odds say. For no matter how god-like any given fighter might seem, no matter how called to a destiny greater than any of their mentors imagined, they can still be felled by an invisible thing. Doctors call it a germ. Superstitious gamblers and YouTubers call it a curse. Whatever you call it, if Makhachev is battling staph at the same time he is fighting Poirier, this main event could get very, very interesting.
If Poirier manages to upset Makhachev, prepare for an MMA world turned upside down. Grab hold of a rail or heavy piece of furniture as the earth’s axis shifts position, and Poirier’s little city of Lafayette, Louisiana becomes the center of the universe for a short, golden span of time. Even the fight gods would be compelled to momentarily set aside their usual, notorious indifference toward the joys and pains of humans, and applaud.
