Justin Gaethje recently threatened to retire if he isn’t granted the next shot at the lightweight title, but Dana White isn’t taking the bait.
White was quizzed about Gaethje’s comments after Ilia Topuria was crowned the new lightweight champion after a stunning KO victory against Charles Oliveira at UFC 317 on Saturday night, and though nothing’s been decided yet, it doesn’t sound as if ‘The Highlight’s’ threat is going to influence his decision on the matter.
“If you’re thinking about retiring, you know how I feel about that, you should probably retire,” White declared at the UFC 317 post-fight presser. “We love Justin Gaethje. Justin Gaethje did step up, and he has been an exciting, fun fighter to have here in the UFC. But to say, ‘Unless you give me a title shot, I’m retiring,’ that’s pretty wacky.”
A former interim champ, the 36-year-old Gaethje fought Oliveira for the vacant lightweight strap in 2022, but lost by 1st round submission.
Since then he’s gone 3-1, picking up a majority decision win over Rafael Fiziev, a head kick KO finish of Dustin Poirier to win the BMF title, and most recently a unanimous decision victory in a rematch with Fiziev, but he was also KO’d by Max Holloway in a BMF title loss last year.
The fact that White doesn’t appear to be jumping at the chance to award the No.4 ranked Gaethje a title shot doesn’t necessarily mean that he is certain what’s going to happen next for Topuria though.
In fact, although the No.10 ranked Paddy Pimblett was brought into the Octagon on Saturday night to square off against newly crowned champion Ilia Topuria, who has already expressed his desire to fight him, White has made it clear that the face-off shouldn’t have happened.
“I don’t know who the hell let him in there. That should have never happened. Let’s start there,” White said in the aftermath of the event. “I was already back in my room or the would have never happened.”
Meanwhile, White has also ruled out the possibility that current No.2 ranked contender Arman Tsarukyan is next in line as it seems that the UFC CEO is still not happy with him for pulling out of a previous title opportunity on short notice last year.
“No,” White told Helen Yee Sports when asked if Tsarukyan successfully weighing in as a back-up fighter for this past weekend’s UFC 317 main event meant he’d get the next title shot. “It’s a good step in the right direction, let’s put it that way.”
So at this stage it’s not really clear at all from White’s statements what the UFC has in mind for Topuria next.
However, an interesting twist in the tale is that Dricus du Plessis recently claimed on Ahmed Amwell’s YouTube channel that the UFC actually intends to have Gaethje fight Pimblett in the co-main event of UFC 319 in Chicago on August 16th, and while there’s no guarantee that’s true, he’d be in a position to know given that he’s set to headline that card against Khamzat Chimaev.
If so, it could well be that the UFC intends to set Gaethje vs. Pimblett as a No.1 contender fight to establish without a doubt who should take on Topuria.
