Justin Gaethje is here to play spoiler to the best-laid plans of the UFC.<\/p>\n
Next month, Gaethje takes on Paddy Pimblett for the interim lightweight title in the main event of UFC 324. It\u2019s a fight that came as a surprise to many, who expected lightweight champion Ilia Topuria would defend his title against either man, or possibly top contender Arman Tsarukyan. However, Topuria is taking some time off for personal reasons, leaving Gaethje and Pimblett to battle it out over the interim belt, but Gaethje views this as just as real as the undisputed title.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s no disappointment at all,\u201d Gaethje said at the \u201cIt\u2019s On\u201d seasonal press conference on Friday. \u201cInterim champion is the same as a champion, on paper, contract-wise. That\u2019s what we fight for. This is my job, and it\u2019s the biggest opportunity for me.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t know a long time before they announced the fight that it was going to be Paddy. I think they were waiting to see if Ilia was going to fight. \u2026 Turns out, he\u2019s going to sit down for a little bit.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo Paramount, this is \u2014 they need a Michael Johnson vs. Justin Gaethje coming-out party. Paramount, UFC combining; this is a fight that everyone wants. We\u2019re going to gain massive fans for UFC. Entertainment business, and I\u2019m the most entertaining fighter in the world. And this guy is pretty close behind me. It\u2019s going to be a hell of a fight.\u201d<\/p>\n
This will be Gaethje\u2019s second interim lightweight title fight, as he won the same belt by beating Tony Ferguson at UFC 249. Originally, Ferguson was supposed to challenge then-lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov in one of the most anticipated bouts in MMA history, but the COVID pandemic forced Nurmagomedov out of the matchup. Instead, Gaethje stepped in and handed Ferguson his first loss in six years, and he sees parallels to this bout with Pimblett.<\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately, like I said, this gets us paid as a champion, and it definitely gives me the chance to fight Ilia,\u201d Gaethje said. \u201cI want to fight Ilia. I want to play spoiler, just like I did with Khabib [Nurmagomedov] and Tony [Ferguson]. I\u2019m going to f*ck this up for everybody. There\u2019s going to be no Paddy and Ilia. I\u2019m going to do the same thing I did for that fight, and then I\u2019m going to fight Ilia on the White House card, if he\u2019s ready to fight again. We\u2019ll see when he\u2019s ready again.\u201d<\/p>\n
UFC 324 takes place on Jan. 24 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, and also features a women\u2019s bantamweight title fight between Kayla Harrison and Amanda Nunes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Justin Gaethje is here to play spoiler to the best-laid plans of the UFC. Next month, Gaethje takes…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":428096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[105,62,552,562,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-428095","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-latest-news","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-ufc","11":"tag-ufc-news","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115670971089357652","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}