The (barely) controlled chaos of Justin Gaethje

I break down the techniques of Justin Gaethje, a man with a fully rounded skillset who chooses to fight like a bloodthirsty halfwit just for the fun of it.

Defense, footwork, nuanced combination punching–all of these are skills in the possession of Justin Gaethje, lightweight action hero, who is set to battle former featherweight champ Max Holloway at UFC 300. Gaethje has all the skills of a brilliant, technical boxer–he even has an excellent jab. Those skills just happen to be driven by the mind of a fearless lunatic. He’s like a maneuverable little Kawasaki bike with the engine (and the guns) of an M1 Abrams tank. 

When Gaethje first arrived in the UFC, he was a brawler, plain and simple. Even then he possessed many of the techniques which still define his game–in particular the crushing low kicks, which Gaethje throws harder (and from a closer range) than just about anyone else. But his fighting style was pure, distilled madness. 

Gaethje won his promotional debut, barely. It was the first of many wars he would have under the UFC banner. After that, a few things happened which changed Gaethje for the better. He lost his next two fights, to two of the lightweight division’s other legendary action fighters, Eddie Alvarez and Dustin Poirier. They both knocked him out. 

About a year and a half later, Gaethje had this to say: “I’m glad I lost twice. I needed that. I wasn’t sure if [my style] was broken when I fought Eddie. I found a lot of success. Dustin showed me what was broken, and I was able to go back to the drawing board. And at this level you better do that or else, you know…. you’re gonna get hit a lot more.”

The other positive influence on Gaethe’s development?

“You know what changed me?” said Gaethje. “I watched Yoel Romero fight. He didn’t do nothing for like three rounds… then he knocked the guy out and everyone went crazy … Trevor [Wittman] tried to tell me forever: ‘you’re trying too hard, man.’ I was like, ‘What does that mean?’”

Yoel Romero. Probably not the first fighter you would elect as an example of strategic thinking, but the contrast to Gaethje’s own style was so strong that Gaethje himself, watching as a fan, experienced an epiphany. Here was a man who didn’t spend every moment of every fight just daring the opponent to kill him, and yet he won. Impressively. He was patient (some might say too patient), but at the end of the day he still garnered the crowd reactions that Gaethje lives for. Justin took that to heart. 

Sort of. 

So. Let’s talk about Justin Gaethje, the Violence Idiot; his many subtle skills, and his characteristically unsubtle way of using them. 

Uppercut go boom

Some fighters fly through drilled movements one after the other without really accounting for the moment-to-moment realities of the position. I call these “rote” strikers. Such fighters do not lack the ability to aim and adjust, but they rely more on muscle memory and less on intuition. This is not necessarily a negative quality. For example, I would describe Rafael Fiziev as more of a rote fighter, and he very nearly beat Gaethje while he was still in the process of finding his timing.

Gaethje, however, does not strike by rote. The extent to which drilled muscle memory does inform his decision making is very broad: for example, he usually puts a left hook after his right hand, usually follows a slip or level change with an uppercut, etc. The vast majority of Gaethe’s in-fight decisions, however, are made intuitively, on the fly. He feels that an opening is there, and goes for it. If he doesn’t feel it, he doesn’t go–or, more often, he goes with something else.

This is why Gaethje is one of the most terrifying combination punchers in the sport, despite the fact that most of his combos are short–often two punches, no more. 

Counter punching is not easy. Far too often a fighter who fancies themself a counter puncher will wait, and wait, and wait for the opponent to make a move, and only then decide how to answer it. Fighters like Norma Dumont, Thiago Moises, and Trevin Jones are purely reactive, and their bouts tend to spiral out of control as a result. Patience alone is not enough. Passivity begs to be punished. The real art of counter punching lies in one’s ability to control the initiative without committing.  

Here, Gaethje demonstrates a keen grasp on this concept. As Michael Chandler comes barging in behind a series of pawing jabs, Gaethje can feel that the moment is not yet right; Chandler has too much initiative. So Gaethje stalls the attack with a little lateral movement. This forces Chandler to reset. Gaethje changes angles back the other way, and again Chandler has to turn and face him before he can continue attacking—which, being Michael Chandler, he does.