Justin Gaethje is grateful for his crazy knockout loss to Max Holloway.
In perhaps the most viral MMA moment of 2024, Holloway delivered a buzzer-beating KO against Gaethje at UFC 300, effectively making ‘The Highlight’ just that.
In the time since, Gaethje has bounced back with two big wins, including a solid victory over Rafael Fiziev and a five-round loss to Paddy Pimblett at UFC 324 that made him interim lightweight champion once again.
The next step for Gaethje will most likely be a showdown with the reigning 155-pound king, Ilia Topuria. Should Gaethje do the unthinkable and ultimately claim undisputed gold on MMA’s biggest stage, he believes the viral loss to ‘Blessed’ will ultimately help, rather than hinder, his legacy.
“I’m glad I lost like that,” Gaethje told Pat McAfee. It’s a much better story for my legacy to lose like this than to let another second pass and just lose a decision. For me to get knocked out and then come back and have two wins in a row makes those two wins that much more inspiring, and it makes what I’m going to do at the end of my career that much more inspiring.
Justin Gaethje open to third meeting with ‘The Diamond’
No official date has been set for Gaethje’s anticipated matchup with Topuria, but ‘The Highlight’ did open the door for a potential threequel with another former interim champion: Dustin Poirier.
“Dustin is a warrior and I will always respect him,” Gaethje told Bloody Elbow when asked about a trilogy fight with his lightweight rival. “If he really wants to come back and the UFC wants that fight, I would. But I’m focused on moving forward, not backwards. I have goals that I’m chasing, and that’s where my focus is.”
Gaethje and Poirier are currently tied at 1-1, with Poirier taking the first meeting via fourth-round knockout in April 2018. Five years later, they would do it again at UFC 291. This time, Gaethje would get his revenge by scoring a huge head-kick KO just 60 seconds into the second round.
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