Marvin Vettori picked a side in the week’s ugliest UFC argument, and he did it with the exact word that started it. On Wednesday evening, US time, the Italian middleweight posted a long message on X aimed at Joaquin Buckley. He accused Buckley of chasing attention (“Buckley looking for clouts”) and called the controversy over the slur nonsense. Then he used the slur himself, more than once, including as his sign-off.
The post went further than defending a word. Vettori argued that Black people today can’t feel anything close to what enslaved people went through, since that history is something “we read it on history books.” He followed with “Eventually you gonna have to get over it right???” and asked whether the grievance would last forever. He argued that if every group kept count of history, every race would hate every other. He claimed the word is only offensive depending on context, said the outrage is “spreading division between one another,” and warned that “The more you police it the more people are gonna say it.” His closing line was a near echo of the phrase Dustin Poirier was filmed saying at an Atlanta airport in June, with a single word changed so that Poirier’s insult came out as approval.
How we got here
Buckley, a UFC welterweight, lit the fuse on Tuesday with an Instagram video. MMA Fighting reported that he went after Poirier over the June airport footage. Poirier was arrested for public drunkenness in that incident, challenged an officer to a fight on camera, and later apologized. Buckley was also angry that Poirier had praised Josh Hokit. The undefeated heavyweight headlines UFC 334 against champion Ciryl Gane and has built a following on deliberately offensive trash talk. In the video, Buckley called Poirier a “Corny-ass motherf*cker” and accused him of borrowing from Black culture without standing with Black people.
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Poirier answered in the comments: “Tryna get some views? Shut up or kill me!” Buckley fired back with another video telling Poirier to take the first swing if they ever cross paths.
When commenters asked why he wasn’t going after Sean Strickland, Buckley posted footage of himself and a friend confronting the middleweight champion. The friend called Strickland out for using the slur at a recent Brandrisk Promotions event. Strickland mostly kept it calm in that clip. He then posted his own video of himself dropping Buckley in a sparring session, captioned “Sit down Buckley.”
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Vettori’s post landed hours after all of that.
Quick take
Vettori’s whole argument rests on context. His claim is that the word only hurts depending on who says it and how. Then he aimed it at a Black fighter who was publicly objecting to white fighters using it, in the middle of a fight about exactly that, and he finished by riffing on Poirier’s airport line. That is the context. He picked it himself. Buckley has spent two days getting dared, dismissed and dropped on camera. The guy who called him a clout chaser just handed him the best clip of the whole week.
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