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#1 Worst: Gaethje might’ve hit the UFC too late

Justin Gaethje (shown here against Eddie Alvarez) may have entered the UFC a little too late

When Justin Gaethje signed with the UFC last year, the main talking points surrounding him were that he would provide massively exciting fights every time he got into the cage and that he probably wouldn’t quite reach the title scene due to the likelihood of his reckless nature catching up with him. Unfortunately, it feels like we’ve reached that latter scenario earlier than was expected.

Gaethje has taken a ton of damage in all three of his UFC outings, but he was only able to outlast and defeat Michael Johnson – a somewhat chinny fighter – and he’s come out on the wrong end of firefights with Eddie Alvarez and now Dustin Poirier. It seems like Gaethje’s once-iron chin is slowly beginning to fail him, and with his damage-heavy style, how long he can last in the UFC is now a question mark.

Prior to signing with the UFC Gaethje had 10 fights in the WSOF organization – most of which were also wars that saw him take a lot of punishment. It may be an unfortunate fact that ‘The Highlight’ has simply found his way into the UFC a little too late, after taking too much damage to truly make his way into title contention.

Gaethje claims he’ll retire after his next five fights, but who can say if he’ll ever reach that amount? It’d be a pity if he doesn’t, but it’s probably even more of a pity that he didn’t hit the UFC a little earlier in his career.