Gaethje: I can’t go to bed every night thinking about the damage

Justin Gaethje accepted intense punishment in going 17-0 prior to his entry into the UFC. Each fight he made a bet that he could take more punishment that his opponent and each time he was right. In his first UFC fight, the pattern continued.

Then it didn’t. The UFC is a different animal than anywhere else in the sport. Gaethje is now 0-2 his last two, and had taken even more punishment than usual – more than he could take. During a recent appearance on Ariel Helwani’s The MMA Hour, Gaethje reflected on his style of fighting, and that at 29, he can see the end of his career in sight.

I’m just telling myself that now because, for one, this is a young man’s game, said Gaethje, as transcribed by Peter Carroll for MMA Fighting. There’s gonna be new guys coming in. Every year there’s fresh guys coming in. I happen to have a college education and I never planned on being a fighter. I went to college, I wrestled and I took some amateur fights. When I graduated, I wanted to start using my degree, but I figured I would start fighting professionally. Then I won 18 in a row and I fought Eddie Alvarez on pay-per-view.

I don’t know, I never thought about being this far or having five fights left. I never planned this whole career that I’ve gotten myself into.

I’m hoping to earn enough to buy a few properties, that way I can make money that way and I want to do social work. Working in a juvenile detention center, being a probation officer for at-risk youths, I’ll do something like that. Something nice and stable.”

Three hard fights in a row, all in the last 12 months, people have said to me that it’s something to worry about. There are guys in the UFC now that have been knocked unconscious seven times, five times, completely unconscious. I have never gone completely unconscious yet. I have passed every single one of my impact tests after the fights.

Of course it’s a concern, but that’s what we do. We fight for a living. If you watched the Edson and Kevin Lee fight, they took punches. Kevin Lee won but he took that huge spinning head kick and that’s not good for your brain, but it is what we do.

I can’t go to bed every night scared or worried because this is what I signed up for. This is what I get paid to do. I try to fight twice a year so I don’t add up [damage] too fast.