Back in 2018, Justin Gaethje walked into the post-fight press conference after losing a second straight fight via knockout and he couldn’t understand why the mood of the room was so glum.
“What’s up guys?” Gaethje said to the smattering of reporters in Glendale, Arizona that night. “Why all the sad faces?”
Advertisement
No one said it. They didn’t have to. Gaethje had come into the UFC as an undefeated wrecking ball, going 17-0 to start his pro career. He’d only seen the scorecards twice before coming to the UFC. Then, after a knockout win in a wild brawl with Michael Johnson in his UFC debut, he lost his next two — both by knockout.
The first came against Eddie Alvarez at UFC 218. Next was this fight in Arizona against Dustin Poirier. It seemed to all present that Gaethje’s all-or-nothing style was finally catching up with him. And weirdly enough, he didn’t seem concerned.
“I didn’t get into this sport to win or lose,” Gaethje explained after that fourth-round TKO loss to Poirier. “It’s an entertainment factor for me. I will be known and remembered as one of the most entertaining fighters that ever did it. I’m content with what just happened, as stupid and crazy as that sounds.”
He meant it, too. We know because here he is, eight years later, still doing it exactly the same. He proved that by winning the UFC interim lightweight title in the Gaethje-est of all possible ways against Paddy Pimblett at UFC 324 on Saturday night. It was wild. It was bloody. It was messy. It was a classic Gaethje fight, which is to say it instantly dashed the hopes of anyone else on this card who thought they might have had a crack at that Fight of the Night bonus.
Advertisement
By the way, that makes 10 such Fight of the Night bonuses for Gaethje in just 15 UFC fights. He also has four separate performance bonuses, all stemming from knockout victories. That brings him into a three-way tie with Dustin Poirier and Edson Barboza for the most Fight of the Night bonuses ever — but the big difference is both those other guys have more than 30 UFC fights each. Gaethje equalled their all-time marks in less than half as many trips into the Octagon.
Thing is, we always appreciated Gaethje for his full-speed-ahead approach. We just didn’t think he’d be able to do it for very long. As Joe Lauzon once put it, Gaethje has always been “a guy who will light himself on fire just to burn you a little bit.” Such people are a lot of fun to watch, but they don’t tend to enjoy a ton of career longevity.
Yet there he was on Saturday in Las Vegas, still doing Justin Gaethje things in the first UFC main event of the Paramount era. Mind you, this is a guy who made his UFC debut on FOX Sports 1. That was two TV deals ago. It’s surprising enough that he’s still around at all. It’s almost unfathomable that he’s still fighting like a human car crash and doing it with a share of the UFC title at age 37.
Advertisement
Way back in those early days — I’m talking pre-UFC, back when he was the WSOF buzzsaw with a perfect pro record — Gaethje assured us that he knew what he was doing. Even then, when he’d still won them all, he insisted that he knew it wouldn’t last. He knew no one could fight the way he did and not lose a few here and there.
He also told us that he knew his carnage-as-entertainment approach meant mortgaging his fighting future. Back when he found himself trying to console reporters after the loss to Poirier (still the only time he’s ever lost consecutive fights, by the way), he estimated he probably had about five fights left in him. Since then he’s had 12, and the only people to beat him over that stretch were Khabib Nurmagomedov, Charles Oliveira and Max Holloway.
These days there are plenty of fighters who talk like they’re going to go out there and bathe in their opponent’s blood. Very few of them seem to mean it. Gaethje is that rare fighter who is — and always has been — exactly who he says he is. The law of averages says it should have caught up to him more times by now. The facts of human biology say he shouldn’t still be able to do it this way after 15 years of intentional chaos.
Still, you look up one Saturday night in 2026 and there he is, swinging from the floor like he has nothing to lose. Some people only know one way to be. And Gaethje has never much seemed like he’d want to be anything else.
