{"id":443866,"date":"2026-01-28T22:44:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T22:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/443866\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T22:44:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T22:44:11","slug":"justin-gaethjes-manager-answer-dana-whites-ufc-324-claim-he-never-responded-to-pay-increase-offer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/443866\/","title":{"rendered":"Justin Gaethje&#8217;s manager answer Dana White&#8217;s UFC 324 claim he &#8216;never responded&#8217; to pay increase offer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Justin Gaethje\u2019s longtime manager Ali Abdelaziz shared his side to UFC CEO Dana White\u2019s recent claims his client turned down a pay increase.<\/p>\n<p>Justin Gaethje reclaimed the interim UFC lightweight championship belt last weekend at UFC 324, defeating Paddy Pimblett by unanimous decision in an instant classic. Gaethje will likely fight Ilia Topuria later this year in what would be his third shot at the lineal lightweight title.<\/p>\n<p>Ahead of UFC 324, Gaethje made some widely discussed claims about his paycheck, following UFC CEO Dana White and others\u2019 claims that fighters will be paid more under the Paramount broadcasting partnership. Gaethje said he wasn\u2019t making a single dollar more for his fight at UFC 324 than for any other fight in his career.<\/p>\n<p>White responded to Gaethje\u2019s comments by saying the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bjpenn.com\/mma-news\/dana-white\/dana-white-responds-justin-gaethje-dispute-pay-increase-ufc-324\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">lightweight star declined a pay increase<\/a> entering UFC 324. Gaethje\u2019s team, for the first time since his back-and-forth with White, shared their side of the story.<\/p>\n<p>Ali Abdelaziz: Justin Gaethje might\u2019ve \u2018not been okay\u2019 with UFC 324 pay increase offer<\/p>\n<p>In a recent interview with <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/2OAvz7piDIs?si=LGOakdJV_WlkKC23\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">MMA Junkie<\/a>, Gaethje\u2019s longtime manager Ali Abdelaziz responded to White\u2019s claims.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have rules, I don\u2019t talk about financial business. Dana was right, there was an offer made. It was made. But sometimes it\u2019s a little bit more money, Dana was not lying, but in reality Justin, maybe he was not okay with the offer,\u201d Abdelaziz said of Gaethje.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut everything worked out correctly \u2013 it was all good, and now we\u2019ll get to talk and in a way, I always say for an athlete and everybody, we have feelings. Men have testosterone, and Justin is emotional. He speaks and he\u2019s not lying. Nobody in the UFC deserves to make more money than Justin Gaethje, nobody.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you think you\u2019re worth money, and you want to talk about it, we can talk about it behind closed doors,\u201d he continued on Gaethje. \u201cBut I think no one wins when people talk about money publicly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What is your early prediction for Justin Gaethje vs. Ilia Topuria? Let us know in the comments!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Justin Gaethje\u2019s longtime manager Ali Abdelaziz shared his side to UFC CEO Dana White\u2019s recent claims his client&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443867,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[75547,64,63,786,8944,785,17498,85,787,133987],"class_list":{"0":"post-443866","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ali-abdelaziz","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-fighting","12":"tag-justin-gaethje","13":"tag-mma","14":"tag-paddy-pimblett","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-ufc","17":"tag-ufc-324"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443866","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=443866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443866\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}