Justin Gaethje promised he’d ruin the Paddy Pimblett party at UFC 324, and that’s exactly what he did across five hard rounds, pounding on Pimblett and earning himself an extremely definitive 49-46, 49-46, and 48-47
unanimous decision win (highlights here). Paddy had his moments, but by the end of the fight “The Baddy” was a bloody mess while Gaethje barely had a bruise on his face.
During the UFC 324 post-fight press conference, Gaethje discussed the win, what he did right, and what Pimblett did wrong.
“This guy, he was trying to hurt me the whole time,” Gaethje exclaimed. “And if I took my foot off the pedal for a second, he was on my ass. And he did a good job up to the last second. I really wanted to finish him, but I loved teaching him a lot. He said my face was not gonna look the same after the fight, and his would look the exact same. So as soon as it was over, I was like, ‘Well look at your face, motherf–ker. It does not look the same.”
“He’s gonna learn from this,” Gaethje said of Pimblett. “You cannot have that mentality when you come in there. He needs to accept the worst possible outcome, and that’s how you perform the best when the pressure is the highest.”
“His mindset going into that fight was not good,” he added later. “It’s not how you can do this. False confidence is is terrible. Terrible. It’ll kill you every time. And that’s what he had. Saying that this was gonna be the same exact fight as Chandler was crazy. And I was like, ‘Yes. Thank god he’s thinking like this … I love everything that’s coming out of his mouth,’ because you cannot approach this sport like that.”
“And he’ll learn, he’s really good. He’s got balls of steel. Can’t get put to sleep, obviously. I don’t know. I mean, I smoked him, and I can’t wait to watch it. But, yeah, I told him after, ‘Stay in it. Stay on it. You’re right where I was not too long ago. Seven years ago as a matter of fact. And he’ll be there soon.”
As for what’s next for the interim lightweight champion, Gaethje said he wanted to represent America at the UFC White House card in June.
“I definitely need some time off,” he said. “He f–king rocked my brain a couple times. And the only thing we have over the more dangerous sports, which is boxing and football, is we get to take time. So I will do that. But the White House is in June and I represent this country. I represented it tonight. Look at the position and opportunity they just gave me here. There’s no way they’re keeping me off that card unless I’m dead.”
Absentee lightweight champ Ilia Topuria took to X (formerly Twitter) following UFC 324 to criticize Gaethje and call him old. But if “The Highlight” is worried about unifying the belt against the champ, he didn’t show it.
“I can’t wait,” he said of facing Topuria. “It’s what I got here for. That’s what we do. And that’s what I believe the next fight is unless he’s not back … There’s no doubt it’ll be the best fight that they could put on. It’ll be for an undisputed belt, and I think they wanna have six or seven [belts at the White House]. They wanna have as many as possible.”
“So if he’s not back by then, they will strip him, and I will be undisputed. And then I’ll fight for the belt on there and defend it.”
