ESPN MMA<\/a> that Gaethje could leave his gloves in the cage if he loses to Pimblett.<\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019m not feeling it, I\u2019m just saying it,\u201d Wittman said. \u201cThe whole thing is I want to keep everybody grateful and Justin\u2019s a very smart guy. He understands and he\u2019s the one that I can have conversations with. A lot of the times when you have a conversation with a fighter\u2014I want to have that conversation with a lot of guys\u2014I don\u2019t want to break their mentality. Justin\u2019s like one of those unbreakable mindsets. He\u2019s very smart when it comes to how his family feels about fighting. He\u2019s also very smart when it comes to longevity. All combat sports, all contact sports bring long-term issues. The No. 1 thing is this is first a hobby, second a career, and then you\u2019ve got to leverage it, and Justin\u2019s very smart when it comes to stuff like that. So when we have these conversations, it\u2019s man to man, and I\u2019m not afraid to speak it out loud.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is our last run. If we don\u2019t win this fight, we\u2019re not going on. We\u2019re not going to go out there and be a gatekeeper and look at money fights and shit like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gaethje has been competing since 2011 and across 31 pro bouts he has been part of some of the most memorable and beloved fights in MMA history. His all-action style and incredible knockout power has resulted in him winning numerous UFC post-fight bonuses, including nine Fight of the Night awards.<\/p>\n
He has won three of his past four fights, recently winning a decision over Rafael Fiziev to bounce back from a brutal knockout loss to Max Holloway. Should he become interim champion a second time, Wittman thinks that would be enough incentive for Gaethje to compete a few more times.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe would fight over and over and over, but he knows he\u2019s got to be there for the family,\u201d Wittman said. \u201cHe\u2019s got to be smart and take care of his health, but we win this belt, my shoot-to-the-moon type of goal would be let\u2019s go out there and repeat defenses. Repeat defenses.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, this is an interim title fight, so we\u2019re not the champ yet, so we\u2019d have to go win that belt next. I always say the key to being the champion is one round at a time. One round at a time gets you one fight at a time. once you get to one fight at a time, then you start to get to the championship level. So we\u2019re not overlooking this, but we\u2019re honest that it gets to a point where we have that roadblock, we can\u2019t overcome those roadblocks no more. He\u2019s 37 years old and we want to be smart.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though Wittman provided plenty of perspective on why UFC 324 could potentially mark Gaethje\u2019s final fight, he made it clear the team is not treating it as a surefire retirement bout since he wants the fighter to be fully committed to victory and not have one foot out the door.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not a retirement fight,\u201d Wittman said. \u201cWhen it comes to retirement fights, I think anybody going out on a retirement fight is going to win one out of 10 times, because you\u2019re already letting go. He\u2019s not letting go.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was just in his position, where we were, we had just been knocked out for a year, we had a title fight, they offered the fight with Max, he didn\u2019t want it. Pretty much everybody around the fight, including myself, was like, \u2018Hey, this is an opportunity to go out there and do your thing from that upper echelon,\u2019 which, when you\u2019re told something, it\u2019s never guaranteed, we know that. But Justin\u2019s one of those company men that he\u2019s always done right for the company and for the fans and he\u2019s a people fighter. His goal when he first got with me was like, \u2018Every time I fight, when you buy a pay-per-view or you buy a ticket to be in the arena, you\u2019re going to be so grateful that you bought that ticket.\u2018 And he\u2019s done that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Justin Gaethje could make his final walk to the octagon at UFC 324. \u201cThe Highlight\u201d headlines the Jan.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,82,640,702],"class_list":{"0":"post-398803","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}