Justin Gaethje has given his thoughts on the recent announcement that he’ll be defending his symbolic ‘BMF’ title against Max Holloway at UFC 300 in April rather than getting the lightweight title fight he’d been hoping for.
“I kind of talked this into existence on accident,” Gaethje told Kevin Iole. “I said, ‘I didn’t want to punch Max Holloway, but he’s also a guy that could fight for a BMF belt.’ That turns out into going to be having to punch Max Holloway. It’s the name of the game, and I am the best in the world at creating damage.
“The last two fights, I have been very tactical and very, very, very methodical in my approach. I think that obviously I’m going to continue to do that, and if I can do that, then it’s going to be very hard for Max to overwhelm me and put me in positions where I shouldn’t be.”
Gaethje admits that he did expect that his next fight would be against current lightweight champion Islam Makhachev, but he sees the chance to defend the ‘BMF’ title at UFC 300 as the next best thing.
“It’s always funny how it works out,” Gaethje said. “You always think it’s going to go one way, and you can never guess what’s going to happen with the UFC. Once the Oliveira and Tsarukyan fight got announced, I was really confident that I was going to get the Makhachev fight, because I figured, obviously there is nobody else to fight him. … I don’t know what’s going on. Some injury or something, but he’s not going to fight till June or July, I guess.
“I was under the impression that if not for sure a title eliminator, that the fight with Dustin Poirier was as much a title eliminator as this Tsarukyan and Oliveira fight is. Now, me fighting on the same card as those guys, I’m going to be obviously above them, all four of us – you know, me, Max, Tsaruykan, Oliveira, we all got a chance to stand out.
“I think it’s a great opportunity. I think it’s second-best obviously if they lined me up with Makhachev – that’s the best-case scenario. Second best scenario is I get to fight for it, and that’s the scenario I’m in. I get to go in there, I get to stand out. There’s going to be two contenders coming out that night. So, we’ll see what happens after that.”
