Justin Gaethje Says Damage Taken During Career Is Becoming A Concern

Former WSOF Lightweight Champion Justin Gaethje is coming off of a fourth round TKO loss to Dustin Poirier in the main event of UFC On Fox 29.

The lightweight competitor has fought a total of twenty times as a professional MMA fighter and there is concern forming due to the damage he has taken in those bouts.

“Three hard fights in a row, all in the last 12 months, people have said to me that it’s something to worry about,” Gaethje said on The MMA Hour. “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 (Barboza) 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 (the damage) too fast.”

In those twenty professional MMA bouts that Gaethje has fought in, a total of seventeen of those fights ended by KO/TKO.

Gaethje does have a plan for his post-MMA life, which is to work in a juvenile detention center.

“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,” he said.

There is no word yet on when Gaethje may return to action, but he has suffered two KO/TKO losses in less than six months time.