Closing The Door: How Justin Gaethje Destroyed Tony Ferguson
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It’s hard to find a fighter treated more brutally than Tony Ferguson. For a long time, the man thought to be the “1B” to Khabib Nurmagomedov’s “1A” was treading water at the top of the rankings; the attempted fights with Nurmagomedov fell apart with alarming regularity, the UFC would opt for a different choice to get the title moving, and Ferguson would defend his spot again. There was concern to be found in those performances, but what Ferguson did better than anyone else was win at all costs.
For every champion since Rafael dos Anjos, the specter of Tony Ferguson seemed to be waiting for them, and he wasn’t going away any time soon. The UFC could come up with all sorts of revocable trinkets to keep Ferguson facing dangerous lightweights on the come-up, but for years, Ferguson coming out the victor in a back-and-forth bloodbath seemed as immutable a truth as death and taxes.
In fact, had Ferguson won at UFC 249, one might wonder what would be next for him if not a title fight, as there was simply no one left with the momentum to merit a shot at the division’s secondary champion. While he wasn’t winning cleanly all the time (or, as his career continued, even most of the time), Ferguson would’ve functionally cleared the division of all other challengers. If his fight in Jacksonville had continued on the path that seemed to be marked after the end of the second round—when he dropped Justin Gaethje with an uppercut near the end of the round—Ferguson plausibly could’ve left the division for years and still come back to no man deserving the title shot more than he did. Aside from Dustin Poirier (who had already lost to Nurmagomedov), Ferguson would’ve proven to be in a league of his own.
Unfortunately, what did happen was a little bit different, because Ferguson was in fact not in a league of his own. Justin Gaethje was an action-fighter at heart, but turned in a performance against Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone that seemed to herald a different sort of strategy for “The Highlight”; against Ferguson, that was brought to fruition. The man who seemed on the road to the gate in April 2018, an underdog to James Vick on the books, captured the interim lightweight championship just over two years later. More impressively, he did it against his most documented and destructive instincts.
The Outside
Even in his first three UFC bouts against truly monstrous exchange-artists (Michael Johnson, Eddie Alvarez, and Dustin Poirier), Justin Gaethje has historically not been the kind to stick to the outside. Against those three, Gaethje marched out quick, trusting in his high-guard and his durability, and it got him carved up. It was a high-risk way to fight against three massive punchers who were great at working around guards, but none of them got out cleanly, either. For a fighter who could give and take a shot like Gaethje, it made sense to bank on forcing pocket-exchanges while mitigating the threat as much as he could.
Tony Ferguson, however, was not that kind of matchup; not much of a pocket-boxer, Ferguson’s preferred slice of range is a bit longer. While he’s a demon with his opponent trapped against the fence, Ferguson’s most consistent and impressive performance was against Rafael dos Anjos, in which he fought at the end of his longest weapons (his bruising jab and front-kick) and found the distance from which he could land on the Brazilian and draw out his responses while still being insulated by the length of his frame. In fact, in close is where “El Cucuy” has always been very vulnerable, as his knockdown at the hands of Anthony Pettis showed.
This made Gaethje’s inversion of his usual process a bit odd. One might’ve expected the marauding Gaethje to stand back a bit when he made his UFC debut against a prime Michael Johnson, but Ferguson was one he wanted to crowd, or so the conventional wisdom might have suggested.
However, Gaethje had a different plan, and this manifested both in the kicking game and in the pocket. In the kicking game, Gaethje had a couple of crafty looks, and it meant that he didn’t need to go head-to-head with Ferguson in “who gets to pressure”; he could play the outside game patiently and kick, and he could win at that too.
Ferguson looked strong early, which is a departure from other Ferguson round-1s, where he’s often outright bad. Against Gaethje, Tony got right to work, and showed that his win-condition may in fact have been a win-condition; playing kicks off his straight punches at least got Tony some early points, and he did a better job than usual pulling Gaethje’s counters out when he jabbed in (before Gaethje really got into gear). The punching-off-kicks was also a nice touch; Ferguson could draw the hands of Gaethje elsewhere (to the side, or lower to the body) and slot his straight-punches through the gaps. If Gaethje was trying to run Ferguson down to counter kicks, that would’ve been a good way to dissuade him.
However, Gaethje still landed the harder shots of the round. Gaethje joined Ferguson in punching off kicks, but differently; instead of using the punch to reinforce the distance he set with the kick, Gaethje used the kick to carry him into the pocket. Gaethje proactively weaving off his leg-kick meant that the likely straight counter would miss, and he left-hooked Ferguson on the way out. The same weave-off-the-leg-kick was seen throughout the fight to keep Gaethje safe, and is an example of Gaethje having genuine defensive comfort. He’s always been in the line of fire, but Gaethje is not an easy man to hit clean.
As the fight continued, the kicking was often just the Gaethje staple; kicking on the counter hobbled Ferguson down the stretch, and took away his ability to do much when he stepped in. Gaethje occasionally getting hit is a function of his style, especially against an unquestionably skilled opponent such as Tony Ferguson; however, a full-power counterkick can keep the same kind of entry from happening again. The third-round counterkick into the weaving left hook mixed both of the tactics from above, and it was a gorgeous moment.
Ferguson couldn’t just sit on the outside and rack up points, because Gaethje could kick with him and was the more dangerous party doing it; however, it was when Ferguson bit down and tried to enforce a pace on Gaethje that the magic started to happen.
A Double-Edged Sword
In the pocket is where Gaethje was expected to have his biggest advantage, which is why his usual frenetic-pressure seemed like a smart gambit. However, Gaethje had a better idea, an extension of the things he’d tried in September against Donald Cerrone. Cerrone was another one that Gaethje probably could’ve finished quicker if he’d just ran him down and swung, but the glorified tune-up was instead an apparent testing ground for a more conservative—but no less dangerous—approach.
Gaethje has always been a terrific counter-puncher, and this is something that his opponents back to World Series of Fighting found; when his high-guard was up, he was still feeling for openings in his opponent’s attack, and even fairly deep pocket threats like Dustin Poirier felt the power of Gaethje when he didn’t mind his Ps and Qs. However, this was usually subordinate to his pressure-attack; Gaethje was a man who thrived on initiative and on forcing his opponents to react to him, so his counter-punching served the purpose of keeping his opponent from just swinging out of danger when they were against the fence.
The fights against Cerrone and Ferguson were different, and this can be attributed to some mixture of a general choice from Gaethje and what his opponents had in common. The first part is easy to consider in the Ferguson fight, as not only was it a five-rounder, it was on short notice. However, what’s more interesting is the second consideration, that Cerrone and Ferguson weren’t the kind that Gaethje needed to pressure to find his spots.
Cerrone worked mostly in blitzing raids to enter with punches, and that left his feet squared and narrow every time Gaethje stood his ground to counter; this made Gaethje sitting on the back-foot and picking him off viable, as he certainly could’ve pressured Cerrone but didn’t need to. Ferguson’s positional issues were different but similar; the characteristic weirdness of Ferguson as a pressure fighter came at the cost of his stance when his opponent swung back. Ferguson could often be found standing perfectly square or running into a kick as he pushed his opponent back, it was just covered by volume and initiative as his opponent was kept reactive. Gaethje keyed on a few specific tools to deal with Ferguson’s tactics, and they worked perfectly; the uniqueness of Ferguson that brought him to the top ended up his undoing.
It was a simple and proficient fight from Gaethje, built on two things: the right hand on entries, and the left hook on exits. The reason for both is Ferguson’s feet, and the right hand was intended to catch Ferguson as he squared up on entry (as he did much of the time, against everyone). Gaethje didn’t even need a real lead sometimes; he could just see Ferguson stepping forward and blast him hard, knowing that Ferguson wouldn’t be able to move his head or pivot smoothly (or probably counter consequentially) without a stance. Ferguson was a bit safer when he tried to jab in, but the way he moved forward got him bombed very often.
In more layered trades, the difference in pocket defense was also massive; Gaethje’s consistent weaving (both proactively and reactively) caused Ferguson a lot of trouble finding clean lands. This is a unique exchange and pretty sophisticated from both, but the thing to note is the difference in how they end the exchanges. Gaethje ducks Ferguson’s committed rear-hand, then takes a short pivot to break the line of attack in case Ferguson continued to blitz. Ferguson proactively ducks Gaethje’s next counter, but comes up with his feet together as he tries to pivot off, and Gaethje shifts through the right to plaster him with the left.
Ferguson’s lack of discipline on exits is what made the left hook so extraordinarily dangerous in this fight; paired with the counter right hand, Gaethje could crack Ferguson coming in, and then chase him out as he bailed. The thing to pay attention to is the number of times his stance is broken as he leaves (how many times his feet are squared and narrow, and how many times he’s simply not facing Gaethje as he leaves), and how often his reaction to the right hand leaves him completely upright and leaning over his heels (in no position to defend anything else at the moment). Gaethje could cover distance extraordinarily quickly, and it caught Ferguson completely bare every time.
On the lead, the concept was the same. Gaethje could draw out Ferguson’s returns with jabs/feints or even throwaway rear-hands to weave under and cover ground, and that put him in position for the left hook. The two-three is sometimes termed “closing the door”, and this is what Gaethje did to Ferguson throughout; the left hook gets a fighter back into position after throwing their rear hand, and it forces an opponent to respect a threat if they’re looking to punish an extension, and so when Gaethje ended exchanges with the left hook, Ferguson was forced to reset (and risk getting countered on entry in the next exchange). There wasn’t a good reason why Ferguson survived many of these exchanges, except Ferguson’s absurd toughness of body and of mind.
Why did this work for Gaethje when Ferguson had been getting away with these tactics for the whole time? The simplest answer is that it did work for a lot of fighters, Gaethje was just more powerful and consistent on the counter than any of them. Ferguson getting caught on entry isn’t new; Anthony Pettis’s moment was that same issue for him, as Ferguson was caught across the jaw totally square. Ferguson getting generally marked up a bit on the inside isn’t new either; Cerrone found a worrying amount of success boxing with Ferguson before Ferguson got going in the second round. Gaethje was the first comfortable counter-puncher Ferguson had faced since Rafael dos Anjos in 2016, and dos Anjos isn’t the bomber that Gaethje is; when Ferguson took a shot from RDA, he ate it and kept going to throw volume, but the same from Gaethje and the exchange was over.
In a way, UFC 249 also re-contextualized the other end of Ferguson’s legendary winstreak, which was his loss to Michael Johnson; “powerful counter-puncher who could beat Ferguson positionally in the pocket” was a rough matchup then, and while Ferguson gained the ability to make it matter less as the years went on (with his draining attrition and his unbreakable confidence), the same issues reared their head here.
As with many great fighters, the more things changed, the more they stayed the same.
Round Five
There should not have been a round five to Gaethje vs. Ferguson. There’s a strong argument that there shouldn’t have been a round four. After his moment at the end of round two, a thunderous uppercut that dropped Gaethje to his knees (after which the brilliant Trevor Wittman convinced Gaethje to take a bit of steam off his shots), Ferguson didn’t have another meaningful moment. He couldn’t enforce a pace without running into massive counters as he stepped out of position, and he couldn’t pressure due to Gaethje’s confidence in blasting him every time he showed his intentions. The way Gaethje finished the fight was just pure attrition, against a man whose corner had nothing good to say (or the judgement to call the fight themselves); Ferguson’s heart was unbreakable, but Gaethje only beat him worse for it. The final round was Gaethje coasting a bit, but he spent the entire time pawing at the shattered side of Ferguson’s face with jabs and lead hooks, and that’s what finished the bout; disorientated, shaking his head, and seemingly blinded in one eye by his wounds, Ferguson’s unending title quest was ended by the referee.
Concluding Thoughts
UFC 249 was the scene of a well-deserved coronation (at least, a half-coronation) for Justin Gaethje, who never really got credit for his technical depth until his last three fights; in terms of style matchups, his career has only gotten easier, and the public seems to have generally confused that with him improving massively. More realistically, Gaethje hasn’t necessarily gotten more dangerous, but he’s changed; the recklessness of the Johnson fight is still viable for him, and is likely a better tactical choice in his next fight against Khabib Nurmagomedov, but the choice to become more of a backfoot counter-puncher is an astute one given the competition in front of him now. More importantly, having multiple different strategies (not tactics, but actual fight-long strategies) to win against different opponents is deceptively rare in MMA; fighters aren’t particularly adaptable as a whole, they generally do what they do until the wheels are hacked off, and so Gaethje’s introspection is arguably less impressive than his ability to implement what he felt he needed to do moving forward. Billed as a violent brute who could drag his opponents into nasty fights but without subtleties, Justin Gaethje has proven to be quite the opposite; a genuinely thoughtful and versatile pound-for-pound talent, whose approach is a choice and not a handcuff.
The other half of the story, of course, is Tony Ferguson, who got his face broken in a valiant effort to maintain his spot against a runway train. It’s likely little comfort to him that he looked more durable and more capable against Gaethje than in any of his fights since 2016; he clearly took Gaethje seriously, he clearly thought about how to approach the fight, and if UFC 249 didn’t end Ferguson’s tenure at the top (as a function of the ridiculous damage he took), he’s still truly dangerous. Ferguson’s freakish durability and his invincible heart is a pair of intangibles that few men can match; a man still laughing in the face of Gaethje’s punches until his face couldn’t create a recognizable smile anymore is someone truly rare. However, insofar as Nurmagomedov/Ferguson, that necessary long-awaited legacy fight, the door is likely closed.
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