It’s been a bit since Jon Anik playfully suggested he’d get a Nate Diaz tattoo if he upset Conor McGregor at UFC 196.
Now about eight years into the now semi-famous “209” ink on Anik’s arm, he’s throwing out potential for a second fighter-themed tattoo. If Dustin Poirier got matched up with Diaz in the UFC and beat him, Anik said he’d pay tribute to Poirier, as well, after a Poirier suggestion of it.
He even said before he hosted the UFC Hall of Fame induction ceremony, he thought about getting a surprise tattoo to honor inductee Frankie Edgar, a former lightweight champion.
“Certainly, the 209 tattoo will not be the last fighter tattoo or fighter tributary tattoo that I get,” Anik told MMA Junkie Radio. “If you really want to know, I was trying to find a really good fine-line tattoo artist in Vegas the week of the Hall of Fame (induction) to get my Fe Iron element symbol in honor of the great Frankie Edgar right here on the inside of my arm that also dons the 209, incidentally.
“But for Dustin, I’ve always wanted a neck tattoo. Part of me wants to mimic his tattoo with the King of diamonds right behind the ear or just a diamond emoji. We could go 337 – you know, I’m not looking to be ludicrous with different area codes with numbers all over my body, necessarily. But yeah, we would go 337.”
Anik said he thinks the odds for that fight likely would highly favor Poirier, but the longtime fighter and former interim lightweight champion from Lafayette, La., still would be worthy of some ink – and risk irking his wife, even just temporarily.
He said when he got his 209 tattoo in 2016 that it took her a minute to be on board.
“Certainly Dustin Poirier is a fighter I would have no problem immortalizing on my skin forever, even if he’s trying to get me to do it in a fight in which he might be a -400 favorite,” Anik said.
Poirier is coming off a fifth-round submission loss to lightweight champion Islam Makhachev at UFC 302 in June. Diaz beat Jorge Masvidal in a boxing match this past Saturday in California. It’s been nearly two years since his last fight in the UFC, a submission of Tony Ferguson in September 2022.
