SALT LAKE CITY – Justin Gaethje is certain Islam Makhachev won’t make it look easy against Charles Oliveira.
Makhachev (22-1 MMA, 11-1 UFC) faces ex-champ Oliveira (33-8 MMA, 21-8 UFC) for the vacant lightweight title in the main event of UFC 280 on Oct. 22 in Abu Dhabi.
Oliveira’s most recent win came with a first-round submission of Gaethje at UFC 274, where he dropped “The Highlight” and choked him out. So knowing how dangerous Oliveira is first hand, Gaethje expects a hard-fought battle.
“I’m 100 percent confident that Islam will not dominate Charles, and that’s about it,” Gaethje told MMA Junkie and other reporters. “I think Charles is going to move forward. Islam is going to try, and eventually he might be successful, and if he is, he’ll win. But I don’t see him tiring him out. Even if he takes him down for the first two rounds, I don’t see Charles getting submitted, and I don’t see him being too exhausted to continue to fight the fight that he needs to fight.”
Gaethje (23-4 MMA, 6-4 UFC) is five weeks removed from nose surgery. He has engaged in some absolute barnburners against the likes of Eddie Alvarez, Dustin Poirier and Michael Chandler, but says fighting Oliveira was unlike any of his past wars.
“I think my last fight, Charles was brilliant, and he hurt me often – he hurt me early,” Gaethje said. “Ten seconds in, I was really hurt, and probably four times after that, I felt something I’ve never felt in a cage. It was just one of those fights where it was against adversity the whole time.
“It was a feeling I’ve never felt. Usually you get hit – call it a buzz, call it a flash. This is more like my tongue just went on a super powerful battery and just my entire body – it was crazy. It was perfect shots, perfect time, one or the other. It was the factors that I faced that night.”
