Dustin Poirier has been making headlines recently for a public drunkenness incident, and a peer from American Top Team has commented on the situation with the former interim UFC champion. Dalton Rosta was the combatant in question who was on the scene during PFL San Diego fight week to discuss his looming clash with Bryan Battle at PFL Charlotte in August.
It was referenced that Rosta tweeted something out that seemed to be referring to the Dustin Poirier situation, a message to the effect of “sad to see, CTE is real.” When asked for his thoughts on that whole situation involving ‘The Diamond’, Rosta said [via Bowks Talking Bouts],
“Yeah, it is sad because like it’s something that I am putting a little bit more focus on recently. Just because I’ve been knocked out twice. You know what I mean? So it’s something that’s in the back of my head. One day I want to have a family. I want to have kids. He’s at that point right now. So, my problem is I got emotional. Like I said, that last fight [vs. Impa Kasanganay] I turned it into a firefight. So, that was kind of my own fault. But on the flip side of it, there’s things that you can’t help. You know what I mean?”
“He’s fought perfect fights and still got knocked out. He’s had wars in the gym. He’s had a lot of wars where he didn’t get knocked out. He’s getting hit a lot. I think a lot of things like CTE takes a toll on people and it changes their personality. It kind of changes who they are. A lot of people will just blame the person, blame their circumstances, will try to say someone’s a piece of s**t, whatever it be. But I think CTE is playing a part in that.”
“So he’s been in his wars and he spoke about how if he’s not busy, he’s a danger to himself. I feel like CTE is probably playing a part. I can’t; I’m not a doctor. You can’t even diagnose that until you’re dead. But like at the end of the day it’s a real possibility and I know he’s a good person. He made a mistake, but is fighting playing a part in that, you know what I mean? That’s something that needs to be studied a little bit more. People need to be a little bit more aware of.”
Dustin Poirier “had one bad moment” and critics should “think about what they’ve done”, per Rosta
Further expounding upon his thoughts on this Dustin Poirier matter, Rosta continued [via Bowks Talking Bouts],
“I definitely don’t think anybody should be giving Dustin a hard time. One, because that’s a possibility, but two, everybody has skeletons in their closet. Everybody’s made mistakes that a lot of people don’t know about, but he’s living in the limelight. So, that gets accentuated and a lot of people talk about it. Then obviously it goes viral in a social media age.”
“So, I don’t think he should be hard on himself. I don’t think a lot of these fans that are criticizing him should be because he is a good person. He’s helped thousands of people and he had one bad moment and everybody does. So, if they’re going to judge him, they should really think about looking in the mirror and think about what they’ve done.”
When touching on the human component here and how much social media can amplify particular moments but where it’s not reflective of that person’s broader character, Rosta stated [via Bowks Talking Bouts],
“Yeah, I agree. Like I said, one bad moment doesn’t mean that’s who you are. Unfortunately, it happened to a good person, but it can happen to anybody.”