Conor McGregor suffers ankle injury in another crushing defeat to Dustin Poirier, with the fight stopped by doctors at the end of the first round.
It was McGregor’s third defeat in his last four fights in the UFC.
As a thrilling first five-minute frame drew to a close at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on Saturday, both fighters were still trying to land as McGregor stumbled backwards, trapping his foot under himself and breaking his leg.
Medics were immediately called into the octagon and it was clear that McGregor could not continue, prompting referee Herb Dean to declare a stop to the bout on the instructions of the doctor.
Interviewed in the octagon with his leg in a cast, McGregor raged about his misfortune.
“I was boxing the head off him, kicking the leg off him, (he was doing) the usual, diving to close the distance. This is not over – if I have to take this outside with him, it’s on outside,” he roared.
With McGregor having won at featherweight in 2014 and Poirier extracting revenge at lightweight in Abu Dhabi in January, the run-up to the third fight was punctuated by bad blood between the pair, in marked contrast to a face-off earlier this year where the pair paid each other compliments.
Though American Poirier was fighting on home turf, his entrance to “The Boss” by James Brown was greeted with boos from the sizeable portion of the crowd that was there to support McGregor, and there was no friendly touch of gloves before the fight began.
