Na he wasn't as sharp as ever, he may have been in good physical shape but his timing has a bit off, he still won the round but missed a lot more shots than he normally would.
I disagree completely about his timing/accuracy having been off.
Conor's striking accuracy in his last five fights, excluding the Cowboy fight in which he had 73%:
Against Poirier (southpaw): 43%
Against Khabib (orthodox): 62%
Against Nate 2nd time (southpaw): 57%
Against Nate 1st time (southpaw): 50%
Let's keep the following things in mind:
1)
Generally, a southpaw will do better against orthodox fighters on the feet, because southpaws are used to fight orthodox fighters, but not vice-versa.
Against other southpaws, both southpaw fighters fight a an opponent they're not as used to, stance-wise, putting them on an equal level, but still making it harder to land what they're usually used to.
2)
Conor understandably got more uncomfortable and less agile on the feet, once the leg kicks piled up - this is of course not due to Conor's timing itself being worse, but Conor being in a position where it's increasingly difficult to move and thus hit as freely and accurately as normally is the case
3)
Out of the fighters mentioned, Dustin has the best stand up, making it harder to land as easily on him as it was the case against Nate Diaz, who's notorious for eating a lot of punches, even without the leg kicks being involved.
Last but not least, Conor's average sign. strike accuracy was 49% before the fight and it was 43% as mentioned above against Dustin and all the things i've mentioned considered, there's not really anything which makes me think Conor wasn't as sharp in his striking.
There were times in the first round, before he already got his leg kicked to mush, where he landed some beautiful and super well-timed combos on Dustin which snapped Poirier's head back quite a bit.
