UFC 291: Justin Gaethje Deserves the “BMF” Moniker After Destroying Dustin Poirier | News, Scores, Highlights, Stats, and Rumors
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Justin Gaethje is one of the most violent and aggressive fighters in MMA history.
Now, he’s got a belt to prove it.
The 34-year-old, who fights with the incredibly apt nickname “The Highlight,” returned to action in the main event of Saturday’s UFC 291 card in Salt Lake City, taking on a fellow former interim lightweight champion in Dustin Poirier.
It was an opportunity for redemption for Gaethje (24-4), who suffered a TKO loss to Poirier (29-7) when they first met back in 2018, and this time, the UFC’s special “BMF” title was hanging in the balance.
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Despite being a slight underdog in the matchup, Gaethje won the fight in emphatic fashion, shutting Poirier’s lights out with a second-round head kick—a nearly identical technique to the one Leon Edwards used to knock out Kamaru Usman in Salt Lake City last year.
Several minutes later, Jorge Masvidal—who won the UFC’s first BMF title fight with a stoppage of Nate Diaz in 2019—was draping the special, silver belt over the victorious lightweight’s shoulder.
“You rarely get a shot at redemption,” Gaethje said in his post-fight interview with commentator Joe Rogan. “I’m glad I came out on top this time.”
“I surprised the s–t out of myself.”
It might have been the most impressive victory of Gaethje’s career. Not only was it achieved in spectacular fashion, but Poirier is one of the best lightweights of all time, with a similar penchant for thrilling performances. Yet it was also just the kind of performance we’ve come to expect from Gaethje.
He has been known as one of the most destructive fighters in the game since long before he even arrived in the UFC. Even when he was fighting for the smaller World Series of Fighting, where he was the lightweight champion, he was known among hardcore fans as absolutely must-see TV—a reputation he earned in dazzling wins over the likes of Luis Palomino, Richard Patishnock, and Brian Foster.
His UFC career, which began in 2017, admittedly didn’t get off to the best start. After a wild knockout victory over Michael Johnson in his first walk to the Octagon, he suffered back-to-back stoppage losses to Eddie Alvarez and Poirier—the first setbacks of his career after 18 straight wins.
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Those losses—the Poirier loss in particular—turned out to be crucial to Gaethje’s evolution.
While he never broke from his habit of delivering stunning performances every time he stepped foot in the cage, he gradually began to refine his hyper-violent style into something more strategic or defensively sound. This shift paid dividends, as he followed his loss to Poirier with four-straight stoppage wins over James Vick, Edson Barboza, Donald Cerrone and Tony Ferguson—the latter of whom entered their fight on a 12-fight win streak.
Gaethje’s transformation has been most visible in his last two fights—a bloody decision win over striking specialist Rafael Fiziev earlier this year, and his highlight-reel knockout of Poirier.
“If you watch [our first fight] compared to this fight, it’s night and day,” he said.
With his win over Poirier, Gaethje is now on a two-fight streak over world-class lightweights. The expectation is that he will receive a shot at the undisputed UFC lightweight title, which has eluded him so far, in his next fight.
It’s an opportunity he clearly wants.
“You know what I want to do next,” he said. “I want to fight for the world championship.”
The title will next up for grabs at UFC 294 in October when former champion Charles Oliveira—the last man to beat Gaethje—attempts to reclaim the title from the man he lost it to in 2022, Islam Makhachev.
It remains to be seen who will win that fight, but Gaethje will most likely be an underdog against either man, as he was recently beaten by Oliveira, and Makhachev is considered one of the top pound-for-pound fighters on earth. In fact, there is a good chance that he will lose his next bid for the undisputed belt—just like he did in his first two attempts, first against Khabib Nurmagomedov and later against Oliveira.
But at this point, Gaethje’s legacy is set in stone, even if he never gets his hands on an undisputed title.
No fighter in MMA history has delivered more excitement more consistently than he has. And while a perusal of his highlight reel is all it will ever take to prove that point, his new BMF title is a tangible acknowledgement of everything he has done in the cage, and it is a trophy he absolutely deserves.
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