Dustin Poirier's long-serving head coach Mike Brown believes his fighter wants to secure another UFC lightweight championship challenge before thinking about battling Conor McGregor again.
Poirier surprised many by finishing heavy favourite McGregor in round two at UFC 257 on Fight Island, avenging his swift loss to the Irishman when they were both rising up the ranks in 2014.
But Brown told MMA Fighting that both he and "The Diamond" feel the Jan. 23 main event should have crowned the American as the new lightweight champ with Khabib Nurmagomedov looking unlikely to reverse his recent retirement, and the belt will probably come before making fan-friendly contests.
“I think all depends on what Dustin wants,” Brown said. “Obviously it was big. It was the second biggest pay-per-view of all time. That’s certainly a reason. They are split 1-1, so it does make sense in some ways.
“But really what Dustin is fighting for is to be the world champion. I think he wants to take time, relax, enjoy his family and not think about anything right now and just enjoy it. But I know really what he wants more than anything else is to have that undisputed world champion title to his name.”
Brown went on to say that Poirier and the team went into the fight prepared for several scenarios, which led to a far more assured performance as a series of hard leg kicks limited McGregor's world-class mobility.
“It really went how we wanted it mostly,” Brown explained. “We thought we should kick and wrestle early and then box in later rounds once the pop is gone off Conor’s punches.
"The plan was to wrestle and kickbox early, use his length, use his kicks early and we figured in the third round or so is when we planned to start boxing, but we didn’t get to that point. He was landing shots before that.
“We also knew or felt that Dustin could win a lot of ways. There’s a lot of different ways he could have done it. We didn’t know if it was going to happen. I mean he’s got the power also to hurt guys, to knock them out early.
"So we knew he could get an early knockout. We knew he had the ability to damage him with the calf kick. We know he had the ability to catch him in a [submission], he’s got very good subs. We knew he had the possibility of winning by decision. We knew he could win in many ways.
"Conor has his ways, too. We knew there were also ways to lose the fight. We felt that we had more ways to win.”