Gaethje, who faces Pimblett for the interim lightweight title at the T-Mobile Arena, says the hands-on nature of wrestling compensated for his bad eyesight because it eliminated worries about distance management.<\/p>\n
“That’s why I’m so good at fighting on the inside because I always had to touch them to know where I was at to punch them,” said Gaethje.<\/p>\n
“It was a distance thing. I was short-sighted in one eye and long-sighted in the other so I used to punch the middle one.”<\/p>\n
He continued: “That’s the skill I had to work on the most and where I fought them the most. I could always see them but it was understanding distance. <\/p>\n
“If I close one eye, they’d be 5ft away and if I close the other they would be right in my face. That was the biggest thing to overcome.”<\/p>\n
Former interim champion Gaethje, who last fought in March with a decision win over Rafael Fiziev, says life has been “awesome” after fixing his eyes but credits nose surgery in 2022 as equally beneficial.<\/p>\n
Following defeat by Charles Oliveira for the UFC lightweight title, Gaethje had an operation to repair his septum, which had been damaged 13 years prior during his wrestling career.<\/p>\n
“It was awesome being able to taste my food again. Those years were something else – I couldn’t see, taste or smell,” says Gaethje.<\/p>\n
“Every experience I’ve had has shaped me and made me the person I am so I’m thankful for all of it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gaethje, who faces Pimblett for the interim lightweight title at the T-Mobile Arena, says the hands-on nature of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":430344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-430343","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-mma","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}