Despite the UFC saying that the Charles Oliveira vs. Arman Tsarukyan bout will be the No. 1 contender fight, Justin Gaethje believes he can still make a statement to be considered for lightweight champion Islam Makhachev’s next fight.
UFC 300 is stacked with lots of interesting fights, and it includes Gaethje’s fight against Max Holloway for the BMF title. Unfortunately for the current UFC BMF champ, the promotion has decided to give the No. 1 contender fight to Oliveira and Tsarukyan. For Gaethje, whom Makhachev wants to fight instead, this is kind of disappointing.
“You always think it’s gonna go one way, and you can never guess what’s gonna happen with UFC,” Gaethje said in his recent interview with Kevin Iole. “I was expecting once the [Charles] Oliveira and [Arman] Tsarukyan fight got announced — really confident that I was gonna get the Makhachev fight because I figured, obviously, there’s nobody else to fight him.
“He was tweeting that he wanted to fight me, but you know, I don’t know what’s going on. Maybe some injury or something. He’s not gonna fight until June or July, I guess.
Despite this, “The Highlight” thinks he can make the promotion giant reconsider some things when he makes an impressive fight in April.
“I was under the impression that if not for sure a title eliminator that the fight with Dustin Poirier was as much a title eliminator as the Tsarukyan and Oliveira fight is,” Gaethje said. “Now, me fighting on the same card as those guys, I’m gonna be obviously above them, all four of us, me, Max, Tsarukyan, Oliveira, we all got a chance to stand out.
“They line me up with Makhachev, that’s best-case scenario. Second-best scenario is I get to fight for it and that’s the scenario I’m in. I get to go in there; I get to stand out. There’s gonna be two contenders coming out that night, so we’ll see what happens after that.”
