When welterweight champion Kamaru Usman was asked to describe teammate Justin Gaethje, the first words he could come up with were “mad man.”
Gaethje fights as if he’s mad and raging at the world, but it’s a process to get an otherwise polite, thoughtful 32-year-old into the headspace he needs to be in to compete as he does.
It’s an eight- or 12-week process of building rage against his opponent for Gaethje to fight as if he’s the angriest man in the world.
On Saturday in the opening bout of the UFC 268 pay-per-view card at Madison Square Garden in New York, he’ll face Michael Chandler, an opponent with a similarly aggressive style.