Kamaru Usman has offered his opinion on what went wrong for Justin Gaethje at UFC 300, with three key factors impacting the BMF title loss to Max Holloway.
Former UFC welterweight champion Kamaru Usman was sitting cageside for teammate Justin Gaethje’s BMF title fight on Saturday and has now detailed the three main factors that led to the dramatic KO loss in Las Vegas.
Justin Gaethje just couldn’t get going against Max Holloway at UFC 300
Despite heading into UFC 300 as the slight betting favorite and current BMF champion, Justin Gaethje failed to get the motor running en route to perhaps the greatest finish in UFC history; albeit a dramatic final second KO defeat at the hands of Max ‘Blessed’ Holloway.
Gaethje had been stinging Holloway with vicious low kicks throughout the opening exchanges, yet ‘The Highlight’ had serious work to do as the bout entered its final round with the judges’ scorecards reading 39-37, 39-37, and 38-38 in favor of the Hawaiian.
Then came the moment that’s been watched and re-watched countless times since Saturday night, Holloway choosing to slug it out in the middle of the octagon before sending an unconscious Gaethje to the canvas with just one singular second left on the clock.
Kamaru Usman on what went wrong for teammate Justin Gaethje
Speaking with Henry Cejudo on the latest episode of the Pound 4 Pound Podcast, Kamaru Usman explained that ‘The Highlight’ had done everything right as he headed into UFC 300, noting that both the camp and weight cut went as well as they could have hoped:
“He’s a constant professional…On the scale, he was good and started to rehydrate and everything was good. He was clicking, he had a great camp, Justin is never going to make an excuse that this is why this happened, Justin is a professional, he was prepared to fight, and he came to fight.”
The ‘Nigerian Nightmare’, who has been a friend and teammate of Justin Gaethje throughout the highs and lows of his UFC championship run, explained how “The place where things might have kind of went sideways is making the necessary adjustment in the fight.”
“I thought he could have made some adjustments to where – he is a wrestler, this fight is completely different had Justin changed levels and took Max down once or twice and he can do it, 100% he can do it.”
“If he changed levels and took him down [even] once in this fight, [that] gives us a different potential outcome, so maybe just the adjustments in the fight.”
Yet Usman also pointed to two key factors that also influenced the outcome of the bout: the spinning wheel kick that broke Gaethje’s nose, and the eye-pokes suffered by ‘The Highlight’ in the early stages of the contest:
“We can’t shy away from the fact that this man, he took that kick to the nose at the end of the first round…He took that kick to the nose which plays a huge part in potentially moving on in the fight, because now you can’t breathe the way you want to breathe.”
“On top of that, we have to see the two eye-pokes, I mean they were clear-cut, legit eye-pokes,” said the former welterweight king, before reiterating that he doesn’t believe Holloway intentionally eye-poked Gaethje:
“It wasn’t that Max was doing it maliciously or on purpose, they happen, but these are the type of things that can alter the outcome of a fight.”
Following the dramatic KO loss on Saturday evening, Justin Gaethje took to social media to post a response to both Max Holloway and his die-hard fans around the world:
“I’m in great spirits with my family. Thanks for all the love. What a sport. @BlessedMMA you’re a dog. Congrats. Well deserved double bonus #ufc300.”
That ‘double bonus’ is in reference to Holloway earning an additional $600,000 for Performance of the Night and Fight of the Night; meaning Gaethje also deservedly walked away with an additional $300,000 pocket money.