Poirier and Buckley ignite a bitter feud over racial slur

Dustin Poirier and Joaquin Buckley have kicked off a nasty feud.

The conflict centers on Poirier’s use of a racial slur during his arrest at an Atlanta airport in June 2026.

Buckley, a UFC welterweight, called out Poirier in a video posted to Instagram.

In the video, Buckley accused Poirier of appropriating aspects of Black culture without standing by the community.

“Dustin Poirier don’t f— with us,” Buckley said.

“Yeah, he’d like to be one of us. He likes it when he pulls up his little jeans and s— when he fights, he likes to scuff his little nose when he’s doing s—. Wants to say, ‘Yeah, I’m from Lafayette, I’m from Lafayette, I went to school with all the black folks.’ Corny-a– m———–.”

Buckley also questioned the explanation Poirier gave for his behavior at the airport.

Poirier had said he was struggling after retiring from the UFC and needed a distraction to avoid falling into chaos.

Buckley called that explanation “bullsh*t.”

“All that crying you was doing in them interviews, talking about, ‘Man, I just need a distraction. If I don’t have a good distraction, if I don’t have something to focus on, I get into chaos,’” Buckley said.

“I start to do sh*t, certain stuff, and I get this dark side. All that shit was bullsh*t. All of it was.”

Buckley challenged Poirier to a face-to-face confrontation.

“When you can’t just be real and you can’t just keep it 100. When you had that situation that occurred at that airport, it’s a lot of you that came out that day and the frus,” Buckley said, according to MMA Sucka.

Poirier responded to Buckley’s video in the comments.

“Tryna get some views? Shut up or k*ll me!” Poirier wrote.

Buckley did not back down.

He replied directly to Poirier, bringing up a deeply personal subject.

“Not that long ago that’s what you wanted to do to yourself. Delete yourself. Remove yourself from the Earth. Don’t put a charge on me. … But I’ll tell you this real quick. When I see you, let’s have that conversation. Let’s talk about it. And if you don’t want to talk, [I won’t talk] either, but you take the first swing. You take the first swing, but I promise you I’ll get the first hit, though,” Buckley wrote.

This is a reference to Poirier’s public statements about struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts after retiring from the UFC earlier in 2026.

Poirier has not responded to Buckley’s latest comments.

The feud began after Poirier praised heavyweight prospect Josh Hokit’s work on the Deep Waters podcast.

Buckley took issue with that endorsement and used it as an opportunity to revisit the airport incident.

The airport altercation occurred in June 2026 at Atlanta International Airport.

Poirier was arrested for public intoxication.

During his arrest, he threatened a responding police officer and used a racial slur.

The footage of the incident went viral.

Poirier later addressed the incident publicly, apologized for his behavior, and thanked the officers for their handling of the situation.

He is scheduled to appear in court in the coming months.

If convicted, he faces up to a year in prison.

Buckley, meanwhile, has his own timeline in the UFC.

After a loss to Mike Malott at UFC Edmonton, Buckley said he would fight one more time to fulfill a promise to his grandmother, then retire.

Buckley has a long list of rivals in the UFC, both in and out of his weight class.

He has also been involved in a heated confrontation with Sean Strickland, though that situation is separate from this feud.