Charles Oliveira has been around a very, very long time. Longer than almost anyone in the UFC. Over that time, the reigning UFC lightweight champion has lost quite a few times – eight defeats in the Octagon, more than any fighter in history has sustained before finally winning his first UFC title.
When you have your flaws and failings exposed so many times on the biggest stage, unpleasant narratives are going to spring up about you. For Oliveira, he was tagged with perhaps the most unpleasant epithet a fighter can be tagged with: quitter. Oliveira was a fantastic talent, to be sure. But when the going got tough, he couldn’t handle it.
It didn’t matter that Oliveira never stopped improving, rounding his game out extremely well since debuting as a 21-year-old with razor-sharp submission skills and very crude striking. It didn’t matter the fantastic winning streak he had gone on since moving to 155, showing very clearly that he had reached a completely different gear as a fighter. He would always be a quitter, and not worth our consideration.
That narrative should have disappeared for good when Oliveira rallied from nearly getting knocked out in the first round to finish Michael Chandler and win the world title earlier this year. But heading into Saturday’s title defense against Dustin Poirier, the doubts still followed him. Oliveira was only a champion of circumstance; the No. 3 contender had won the title by beating the No. 4 contender because the actual best of the best, like Poirier, had been busy. Poirier was a real battle-tested fighter, tougher and more durable, who would break Oliveira late if he didn’t knock him out early. It was all stuff we had heard before.
Then the fight started. Oliveira got in trouble in the first. And then, once again, he roared back to win the fight. And where are those doubters now?
I’m not going to act like Oliveira didn’t need this fight to be recognized as the true world No. 1. Those criticisms listed above? Almost all of them were based in reality. With Khabib Nurmagomedov having retired, the two consensus top 155ers were Poirier and Justin Gaethje, and Oliveira had beaten neither of them. Oliveira’s run to the title, impressive as it was, came against Kevin Lee (no longer in the UFC), Tony Ferguson (now pretty clearly washed) and Chandler, who just lost to Gaethje. Was Oliveira one of the best lightweights in the world? Absolutely. But the best? The resume still had something missing before you could say that.
And yes, I don’t think the Charles Oliveira of a few years ago wins that fight. Poirier dropped him in the first round, and pretty clearly had him outgunned on the feet. Poirier is one of the best lightweight boxers in MMA, and there was a very visible power difference in the hands. This was the kind of fight where, historically, Oliveira had faded.
But you could have said that about the Chandler fight too, and Oliveira didn’t fade then. He didn’t here either. Oliveira lost the first round but kept himself in it, making investments with some very sharp body work that took some of Poirier’s bite. By the end of the first round, you could catch the challenger taking a few deep breaths. From that point on, one of the best grapplers in MMA took over.
A lot has been made of the events of the second round, which Oliveira controlled completely from top guard, beating Poirier up with elbows and turning the tide of the fight. There was what appeared to be an illegal glove grab from Oliveira in the initial grappling sequence, that has earned him plenty of criticism – some of it’s deserved, but Poirier has said he didn’t feel the glove grab, and it certainly didn’t force him to do the weird, ill-advised Granby roll that ended up with Oliveira on top of him. There was also the fact that Poirier waited out the entire round in closed guard, apparently completely content to throw the frame away. Again, I thought that had little bearing on what actually happened – it was clearly a coaches’ call not to risk anything from that position, and judging by what happened in Poirier’s fight against Khabib, it might have been a smart move.
We’ll never know. Because weird shit or not, Oliveira dominated the second round, and the momentum was firmly on his side when the bell rang for the third. Oliveira quickly took the back off a takedown attempt early in the round, and then reminded us the No. 1 reason he got to the dance – he’s one of the sharpest submission specialists the sport has ever seen. Once in that position, Poirier’s fate was sealed.
Make no mistake: this is a true legacy win for Charles Oliveira. Poirier is an all-time great who has reached a different level over the last few years. Over the last five years, only two men have beaten Poirier: Oliveira and Khabib. How about that for good company? And in overcoming Poirier the way that he did, Oliveira has proven once and for all that the old narratives no longer apply.
Charles Oliveira found himself in a strange position on Saturday night: as a world champion still desperately needing to win to prove that he actually belonged at his level. But now, every single doubt has disappeared. What we have now is a true champion, one with the potential to reign for quite a while.
The Big Fight 