"Oliveira has been submitted twice with the guillotine" - Teddy Atlas believes a submission could be Dustin Poirier's route to victory at UFC 269
Teddy Atlas feels since Dustin Poirier has been good with the guillotine choke and Charles Oliveira's been finished twice before in his career with the same move, the submission might be the former's route to victory this weekend.
Oliveira will make his first lightweight title defense against Poirier in the main event of UFC 269 on Saturday. The pay-per-view will take place at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
On THE FIGHT with Teddy Atlas podcast, the American boxing trainer and fight commentator claimed 'Do Bronx' and 'The Diamond' are evenly matched and are going to stretch each other to their limits.
"One of the great strengths, and there is a lot of them, of Dustin Poirier is he's damn good at the guillotine. He is obviously confident with it and well versed. He knows he can guillotine a guy, get a guy out if you give him that chance. He came close to doing it to maybe the greatest of all time Khabib [Nurmagomedov]. And then I am looking at it and there it is. Oliveira has been submitted twice with the guillotine. As soon as I saw that, I'm saying that is what I was looking for. So with all of that said, I think it's gonna be a great fight. I think there is going to be a little bit of chess because these guys are so similar and so good at what they freakin do," said Atlas.
Watch Teddy Atlas in conversation with co-host Ken Rideout below:
Oliveira has the most submission victories in UFC history with 14. However, he's been submitted thrice in his MMA career. Two of those losses came with the guillotine in back-to-back bouts against Anthony Pettis and Ricardo Lamas.
This will be Dustin Poirier's second shot at the undisputed lightweight championship
Dustin Poirier's first UFC lightweight title shot came against Khabib Nurmagomedov in a unification fight at UFC 242 in September 2019. The interim titleholder lost via submission at a time of 2:06 in the third round.
.@CharlesDoBronxs vs. @DustinPoirier is a special title fight.
The #UFC269 headliners combine for the most UFC fights, wins, finishes and bonuses ever a championship bout. 🤯 https://t.co/RgAyQbh64P
Dustin Poirier has since picked up three wins on the trot. He overcame Dan Hooker via unanimous decision in June last year and followed it up by beating Conor McGregor in both the rematch and trilogy fight in 2021.