Justin Gaethje has shown by his actions that his family comes first ahead of his title fight against Khabib Nurmagomedov at UFC 254 on Saturday night.
On a recent episode of the UFC Embedded show, Gaethje revealed that he had personally talked Dana White into allowing his parents to come with him to Fight Island, explaining that they had been to all but one of his bouts and he didn’t want them to miss out on the biggest of them all.
Even more significantly, Gaethje has revealed that, win or lose, he’s going to earn enough on Saturday night to ensure that his mother can join his father in retirement.
“If this fight starts, if that bell rings at the beginning, then I will secure that she will retire after this fight. She’s been there for 35 years.”
Gaethje says it’s the least he could do after everything that his parents have invested in him over the years.
“Every piece of money they had went into me and my brother and my sister, giving me the opportunities. We were two hours from any city. Going school-clothes shopping was a vacation for us. We’d get up and go to wrestling tournaments. We had to drive two to three hours. Sometimes, we’d have to stay the night. They financially took hits every single time we did that. Nothing is better than being able to repay that.”
