Turns out Justin Gaethje's presence at UFC 324 was of paramount importance

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Back in 2019, when the UFC kicked off its new deal with ESPN in New Jersey, Henry Cejudo finished TJ Dillashaw in just 32 seconds. It was a hell of a showing for the 125-pound champion, and it served as a reason to keep the flyweights off the endangered species list. Cejudo felt a little like the unsung savior of a division being threatened to go the way of the dodo.

To kick off its new seven-year deal, $7.7 billion deal with Paramount+, the UFC trotted out Mr. Reliable, Justin Gaethje, to face Paddy Pimblett. Seven years ago, we wondered why the UFC would have Greg Hardy in a co-main event on ESPN (given his baggage), especially on a card that Rachael Ostovich appeared on (given her backstory), and this time we wondered why Gaethje was getting a shot over a more deserving Arman Tsarukyan.

Well, Saturday night answered the latter.

The thing about Gaethje is, you’re gonna have to kill him. If the UFC had hoped to coronate Pimblett as its interim lightweight champion — and thus, set up a mid-year unification bout with his nemesis Ilia Topuria — the 37-year-old Gaethje had other plans. He went in there and put it on Pimblett for the better part of 25 minutes. He treated the idea of retirement, the “r” word that followed him around all week, as nothing more than a punchline.

In the first round, if there was a vintage flare to the proceedings, it was that Gaethje lost his head a little bit. The berserker of years past showed up, completely off script from the game plan his coach Trevor Wittman had drawn up, and it set a tempo. He was like a brawling toddler bounding forward on unsure legs. And honestly, the card needed it. It had been bobbing around with no real moment to define it, other than the bells and whistles of the Paramount+ intro packages. Sean O’Malley’s fight with Song Yadong wasn’t the barnburner people hoped, and Rose Namajunas’ fight with Natalia Silva had more restraint than a Hemingway short story.

But Gaethje was bent on giving Vegas its money’s worth. And he was perhaps intent on lining his own pockets, as well. It was him, after all, who brought to issue the UFC’s pay and bonus structure staying the same despite the asinine number of zeroes attached to the new Paramount+ deal. The UFC accordingly bumped up its bonus money from $50,000 to $100,000 and announced that finishes would receive $25,000 across the board.

Did Gaethje’s prompting play a hand?

In any case, he played his own. As the fight rolled on, he settled into things and dished out punishment that opened people’s eyes to Pimblett’s toughness. If Pimblett’s grappling was going to the game-changer, as some assumed, Gaethje was going to do everything in his power to turn the tables. And he did. He hurt Pimblett a number of times, and kept him bad spots, shoveling punches into his head in volume. What kind of fighter is willfully built for this many wars?

Gaethje, the man who Rafael Fiziev was supposed to age in dog years. Gaethje, the next in the line of aging stars that Pimblett was supposed to feast on. Gaethje, the man from the copper mines of Morenci, Arizona, who has more grit in the gut than perhaps we understood.

He took Tsarukyan’s spot at the title table, but he made sure the UFC didn’t regret it. And now he has a belt wrapped around his waist. It’s the second time he has held the interim lightweight title, which is an odd distinction. The last time he won it — against Tony Ferguson at UFC 249 — he had to go against the lightweight GOAT, Khabib Nurmagomedov, in the unification bout. It had a Sisyphus feel in that he pushed as far as he could only to tumble back down to earth.

Since then, he’s won the BMF title in spectacular fashion against Dustin Poirier and lost it in even more spectacular fashion against Max Holloway. The Holloway fight was supposed to be the end of Gaethje, who had stood in against the who’s who for a decade. Now he’ll likely face Topuria, who is right there in the running with Islam Makhachev as the best pound-for-pound fighter going.

He will be a massive underdog. Steak being slid under the door for Topuria.

But it’s kind of been that like that, anyway, and yet Justin Gaethje’s still here. Beating Fiziev a second time last March was one of the most thankless tasks of 2025, yet he did it. Showing up as a centerpiece to kick off the Paramount+ era was perhaps a bigger encore than many thought he deserved. He made the pay plateau a major subject before he ever stood in there with Pimblett, and then when he did get in there, with all the cinematic vibes of the new UFC/Paramount+ partnership playing as his backdrop?

He did what Justin Gaethje does best. He made it a traumatic life experience for Liverpool’s own. Did you see Pimblett’s face in the aftermath? After they’d squeegeed away the blood, and pressed the enswell against all lumps? It was every shade of red, purple and bruising blue. Gaethje’s business is in the before and afters. Show up in mint condition. Leave looking like you’ve spent six hours on tumble dry.

It was hard to justify Gaethje being in the spot he was this weekend, but it turns out his presence was of paramount importance.