Back in 2018, Justin Gaethje walked into the post-fight press conference after his second consecutive knockout and couldn’t understand why the mood in the room was so somber.
“What’s wrong, everybody?” Gaethje told a handful of reporters that night in Glendale, Arizona. “Why is your face so sad?”
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No one has ever said that. They don’t have to do this. Gaethje entered the UFC undefeated and started his career with a 17-0 record. He had only seen the scorecards twice before coming to the UFC. Then, after winning a knockout in a fiery brawl against Michael Johnson in his UFC debut, he lost his next two fights — both by knockout.
The first is against Eddie Alvarez at UFC 218. Next up is a matchup against Dustin Poirier in Arizona. In everyone’s eyes, Gaethje’s all-or-nothing style finally caught up with his. Strangely, he didn’t seem worried.
“I’m not in this sport to win or lose,” Gaethje explained after his fourth-round TKO loss to Poirier. “It’s an entertainment factor for me. I will be remembered as one of the funniest boxers of all time. I’m happy with what just happened, even though it sounds silly and crazy.”
That’s what he meant too. We know this because eight years later, he’s still doing the same thing. He proved that on Saturday night at UFC 324 by defeating Paddy Pimblett in every way possible to win the UFC interim lightweight title. Very wild. Too bloody. Very messy. It’s a classic Gaethje fight, which is to say that it immediately dashes the hopes of others who thought they might have gotten the Fight of the Night bonus for this card.
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Incidentally, this brings Gaethje to 10 such fight-of-the-night bonuses in 15 UFC appearances. He also has four separate performance bonuses, all from knockout wins. That puts him in a three-way tie with Dustin Poirier and Edson Barboza for the most money on the night ever — but the big difference is that everyone else has fought in over 30 UFC fights. Gaither tied their all-time record with less than half a dozen Octagon appearances.
The truth is, we’ve always admired Gaethje for going full steam ahead. We just didn’t think he could last very long. As Joe Lauzon once said, Gaethje has always been “a guy who sets himself on fire just to get you burned.” These people are fun to watch, but they tend not to enjoy long careers.
Yet here he was in Las Vegas on Saturday, still doing Justin Gaethje’s thing in the first UFC main event of the Paramount era. Mind you, this is a guy making his UFC debut on FOX Sports 1. That was before the two TV deals. It’s amazing that he still exists. It’s incredible that at 37 years old he’s still fighting like a human car crash and sharing a UFC title.
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Back in those early days — and I’m talking pre-UFC, when he was a WSOF buzzsaw with a perfect pro record — Gaethje assured us he knew what he was doing. Even so, while he still won them all, he insisted he knew it wouldn’t last long. He knew no one could fight like him without losing a few men here and there.
He also told us that he knew his killing for entertainment meant mortgaging his fighting future. When he tried to comfort reporters after his loss to Poirier (which, by the way, remains the only time he’s lost consecutive fights), he estimated he probably had about five fights left. Since then, he has won 12 times, and the only people to beat him during that time were Khabib Nurmagomedov, Charles Oliveira, and Max Holloway.
There are a lot of fighters these days who talk like they’re going to go out and bathe in the blood of their opponents. Very few of them really mean it. Gaethje is that rare warrior who is — and has always been — exactly what he says he is. By the law of averages, he should have caught up to him many more times by now. The facts of human biology suggest that after 15 years of willful chaos, he shouldn’t still be able to do this.
Still, you look up on a Saturday night in 2026 and there he is, rocking the floor like he has nothing to lose. Some people only know one way of life. Gaethje never seemed to want to be anyone else.
