Even in retirement, Dustin Poirier hasn’t stopped getting on the mats at American Top Team. But that’s also how you end up with a broken pinky toe. For a guy who walked away after a five-round war at UFC 318 in New Orleans, it was a reminder that the grind doesn’t just switch off because you retired.

“Broke my damn toe today,” he wrote alongside a video of the gnarly injury. The clip shows him bending the toe to audible gasps from his training partners.

The clip went viral because, well, toes aren’t supposed to bend like that! It also landed a little differently because of Dustin Poirier’s history with injuries. Over a 15-year run in the UFC, he fought through who knows how many bumps and bruises we never heard about. He retired with a 30–10 record (one no contest) and 10 Fight of the Night bonuses, which tells you everything about the way he chose to fight. He didn’t win an undisputed belt, sure, but he won fans by turning bad nights into wars that went down in history.

That’s where the Conor McGregor parallel comes back into the picture. When McGregor pulled out of UFC 303 in 2024 with a broken pinky toe, ‘The Diamond’ didn’t exactly buy it.

“A pinky toe? I fought with so much injuries,” the Louisiana native told Ariel Helwani at the time. “Like Conor said, he’s fought with so many injuries, I fought with so many injuries over the years, but a pinky toe doesn’t seem like a reason to pull out of a fight.”

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As it often does, that comment was turned into a meme by the MMA fandom. And now Poirier is literally dealing with the same injury he once downplayed. Yet, the difference is simple: Poirier isn’t booked. While McGregor was trying to mount a comeback on a massive stage, the toe became the reason that the return was delayed again. Same body part, very different stakes.

Dustin Poirier walked away after a unanimous decision loss to Max Holloway in New Orleans. It was the third fight of their rivalry. ‘Blessed’ dropped him multiple times, Poirier rallied back, and they turned UFC 318 into another classic. He lost, but it felt like the right ending. Since then, Poirier has hinted that it would take something special to pull him back.

Dustin Poirier teases a return to close out his story against Justin Gaethje

MMA retirements rarely stick, and Dustin Poirier isn’t pretending he’s immune to the pull of the octagon. And Dustin Poirier isn’t pretending he’s immune to that pull. After Justin Gaethje tore through Paddy Pimblett at UFC 324 to claim interim gold, the old names started circling back into the conversation.

UFC veteran Josh Thomson floated the idea of one last dance between Poirier and Gaethje, and this time, Poirier didn’t swat it away. “I’ll come back for that one,” he wrote on social media.

Poirier took the first fight in 2018 by TKO. Gaethje evened it up in 2023 with a vicious head kick knockout and walked away with the BMF belt. One apiece, and no tie-breaker. For fight fans, that’s unfinished business. There’s also timing at play. Gaethje now has to unify his interim belt with Ilia Topuria. If he gets through that, the division will reshuffle again. That’s when nostalgia fights tend to sneak onto the calendar.

The broken toe is a minor setback; the real question is whether the noise around a trilogy fight with Gaethje is special enough to lure Poirier out of retirement, despite the risks.