Fast facts
- Division: Lightweight (UFC Lightweight Champion)
- Record: 28-5
- Nationality: American
- Team/gym: Genesis Training Center
- Notable wins: Ilia Topuria, Tony Ferguson, Dustin Poirier, Michael Chandler, Paddy Pimblett, Donald Cerrone, Edson Barboza, Michael Johnson
The whole lightweight division is stuck in a holding pattern, and the man holding it up was once told he’d never make it past a copper mine in eastern Arizona.
Justin Gaethje is the UFC lightweight champion. He’s ranked No. 1 at 155 in Knockout Daily’s Cagefile data, and as of September 22 he sat at No. 3 on the UFC’s pound-for-pound list. At 37 he became the oldest fighter ever to win a UFC lightweight title. He’s the only man to win the interim lightweight belt twice. And as Yahoo Sports noted over the weekend, he still hasn’t decided what he’s doing next. Charles Oliveira, Arman Tsarukyan, Paddy Pimblett and Topuria are all waiting on that answer.
Safford, the mine, and a mat
Gaethje was born November 14, 1988, in Safford, Arizona. His mother, Carolina, is of Mexican descent from Naco, Sonora, and worked as a postmaster. His father, John Ray, is of German descent and spent 36 years at the Morenci mine before retiring in 2019. Both of his grandfathers mined copper too, and his paternal grandfather boxed in the Army. Gaethje has two sisters and a twin brother, who put in almost a decade at Morenci himself.
At 18, Justin did one summer underground. He told ESPN’s Brett Okamoto in 2020, “I worked 7 days a week, 12 hours every day. I did it for 3 months straight and took one sick day, because I had to sleep. I did 96 hours one week.” On his way out to college, two co-workers had a send-off for him: “You’ll be right back, you ain’t gonna make it in college. You’ll be right back here.”
He didn’t go back. He’d been wrestling since he was four, went 191-9 at Safford High as a two-time state champ and four-time finalist, and took a Division I offer from Northern Colorado. As a junior he placed seventh at 157 pounds at the 2010 NCAA Championships, the school’s first Division I All-American since Larry Wagner in 1970. The cut to 149 as a senior was rough on him. In 2020 Northern Colorado put him in its athletics Hall of Fame.
It was in that Northern Colorado room, as a freshman, that he wrestled Georges St-Pierre, Clay Guida and Donald Cerrone. His coaches told him to fix his grades if he wanted an amateur fight. He did, and he slammed his first amateur opponent unconscious on August 2, 2008.
The style
That slam set the tone. He went 7-0 as an amateur, then debuted as a pro in August 2011 by slamming Kevin Croom out of a submission attempt. He went 7-0 on the Colorado and Arizona regional circuit with six stoppages, including a 12-second knockout of UFC veteran Drew Fickett.
What Gaethje brought to the cage was wrestling credentials he almost never used to hold anyone down. He used them to stay upright while he walked forward and chopped legs. In World Series of Fighting he stopped Brian Cobb and Brian Foster with leg kicks, and Luis Palomino with leg kicks and punches (the Los Angeles Times called that one the best fight of 2015). He became the first and only WSOF lightweight champion, defended that belt five times, and got himself suspended indefinitely by the Colorado commission for backflipping off the cage after the Foster win. They lifted it a day later.
The kicks were never decoration. After their 2018 war, Dustin Poirier found out Gaethje had partially torn his quad. “He tore my quad,” Poirier said, adding that even Jim Miller had hurt his calf, “but nothing like that.”
The fights that built the legend
He walked into the UFC in July 2017 and stopped Michael Johnson in the second round of a fight Sherdog named the best of the year, with Round 2 taking best round of the year. That’s how you debut.
Then came the losses that somehow made him more popular. Eddie Alvarez knocked him out in Round 3 at UFC 218, his first defeat ever. Afterward Gaethje said, “If I lost, I hoped that I would get knocked out. All of those things came true.” Poirier stopped him in the fourth round four months later. Both fights won Fight of the Night.
He answered with three first-round finishes in a row: James Vick, Edson Barboza, and Cerrone, the guy he used to wrestle in college. Then, on short notice at UFC 249 in May 2020, he dismantled Tony Ferguson over five rounds and stopped him, ending Ferguson’s 12-fight win streak and taking the interim belt.
Khabib Nurmagomedov submitted him with a triangle at UFC 254. Gaethje tapped, and referee Jason Herzog didn’t step in until after he’d gone unconscious, which still bugs me. Oliveira choked him in the first round at UFC 274 even after Gaethje dropped him twice. In between, he beat Michael Chandler by decision at UFC 268 after nearly finishing him in Round 2, another fight that took Fight of the Year honors from the UFC itself.
The Poirier rematch at UFC 291 ended with a head kick in Round 2 and the BMF belt. He lost it at UFC 300 when Max Holloway knocked him out in the last second of a five-round fight, the kind of ending you can’t script, and walked away with a $300,000 bonus anyway.
The count is ridiculous: five of his fights (Johnson, Alvarez, Poirier, Chandler, Holloway) have been named Fight of the Year by multiple outlets. He has 17 bonuses in 16 UFC appearances, the best bonus rate in company history, and a record 11 Fight of the Night awards. Fight Matrix ranked him as the sixth-greatest lightweight ever back in July.
The title run
After beating Rafael Fiziev a second time at UFC 313, Gaethje took a unanimous decision over Paddy Pimblett at UFC 324 in January for his second interim title. On June 14 he fought Topuria, then the undefeated champion, on the White House South Lawn at UFC Freedom 250, and he won. Bloody Elbow put it plainly this week: Pimblett and Topuria both lost to Gaethje and are both angling for another title shot.
What’s next
This is where it gets messy. MMA Mania reported that Tsarukyan is the No. 1 contender and the logical next opponent, but that multiple reports have the UFC weighing an immediate Topuria rematch. Pimblett, speaking to Kolos MMA at the Contender Series, pitched a season of The Ultimate Fighter coaching opposite Topuria. Dana White said at the UFC 332 press conference, “I love the idea of that, but a lot of things determine how things play out.” Yahoo Sports reported that any Topuria-Pimblett plan hinges on Gaethje’s decision. Yahoo also ran a story headlined “Daniel Cormier Says Justin Gaethje Has No Easy Options Amid UFC Title Defense Questions.”
The UFC didn’t wait around for the BMF belt, at least. With Gaethje yet to announce his next move, Cageside Press reported, the promotion booked Oliveira, ranked No. 3 at lightweight, to defend that belt against Diego Lopes atop UFC 335 on December 12 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. That’s the man who submitted Gaethje in 2022, fighting for the strap Gaethje once held, on a card built while the real champion is sitting at home deciding whether he wants another war.
