UFC 291 results: Justin Gaethje uses brutal head kick to knock out Dustin Poirier
Gaethje avenged a 2018 loss to Poirier and claimed the BMF title with a first-round-stopping head kick at Salt Lake City's Delta Center.
Justin Gaethje knocked out Dustin Poirier with a head kick at 1:00 of the second round at UFC 291, held Saturday, July 30, 2023, at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City, according to coverage from ESPN and Yahoo Sports. The finish avenged Gaethje's TKO loss to Poirier in their first meeting in April 2018 and earned Gaethje the BMF (Baddest Motherf***er in the Game) title.
ESPN reported the kick as a right-leg high kick that was partially hidden behind a punch and partially blocked by Poirier's arm, but still carried enough power to send Poirier backward; referee Herb Dean stopped the fight after a follow-up punch. Gaethje improved to 25-4 overall (8-4 in the UFC), while Poirier fell to 29-8, according to ESPN's report.
Reporting did not specify the full detail of every exchange in the opening round, in which Poirier had opened a cut over Gaethje's eye before Gaethje recovered to finish the fight in the second, per ESPN's account.
A rematch four years in the making
Poirier had stopped Gaethje on strikes when the two first fought in April 2018. ESPN's coverage of UFC 291 frames the head-kick finish as Gaethje's redemption in the rematch, with Gaethje tying for the fifth-most knockout finishes in UFC lightweight history at six, per ESPN.
In their own words
This is unlike any other sport on earth, because you barely get a chance at redemption...to come back and prove myself -- I believed in myself the whole time.
Gaethje made that comment after the fight, according to ESPN's report. He also said, per the same coverage: "I want to fight for the world championship...I'm willing to roll the dice every day."
What it signals for the lightweight division
ESPN's coverage noted Gaethje was positioning himself for a lightweight title shot, with champion Islam Makhachev's next defense, against Charles Oliveira, then scheduled for UFC 294 in October 2023. Jorge Masvidal, the first man to hold the BMF title, attended the event and presented the belt to Gaethje, according to ESPN's reporting -- a detail that underscores how the BMF title, created for spectacle rather than divisional ranking, was being treated in the moment as a serious credential heading into a possible title run.
US In News compiled this archived account from contemporaneous coverage by ESPN and Yahoo Sports. It restores a story originally published on this site in July 2023; figures are as reported at the time.