Gaethje’s secret weapon is his Ariz. hometown
SAFFORD — Justin Gaethje has about 10,000 secret weapons going into his championship fight Saturday in Abu Dhabi at UFC 254.
He’ll need all of them. He’s facing a monster.
Khabib Nurmagomedov (28-0-0) is undefeated. He made Connor McGregor quit. And he brags about sparring with bears and lions. “Khabib is the best at what he does … Khabib breaks people,” Gaethje trainer Trevor Wittman said.
Maybe so. But the people of Safford, Arizona — seemingly all 9,872 of them — aren’t buying it.
“I’m not worried,” Kasey Kempton said.
Kempton sells cars and service at his family’s Chevy-Buick dealership. He won a wrestling state title with Gaethje about 15 years ago at Safford High, and he’s been keeping up with his old training partner ever since.
“I’ve seen him wax people that were undefeated,” Kempton said. “That’s not gonna make no difference in his mindset — at all.
“The guy just has … he’s got something else. I can’t explain it. But you can’t rattle him. You can’t get him nervous.”
‘Winning tradition ... banners for days’
The whole town knows Justin Gaethje (22-2-0).
It’s easy to find someone, at the Graham County Courthouse or the local post office, who’ll say they don’t know the ins and outs of mixed martial arts, but they know about the kid from up the street who made it big.
His family is three generations deep in the copper mines that fuel the town, which sits way out on the eastern edge of the state, about two hours from anywhere anybody’s ever heard of.
There’s something about the that breeds champions.
“We have a winning tradition in Safford,” longtime wrestling coach Herman Andrews Jr. said. “We have banners for days. For every sport. There’s not just one sport.”
There are nine state title flags hanging in the Bulldogs’ wrestling room. The main gymnasium boats more than a half dozen others, touting 92 championships in everything from track and field to volleyball.
Around here, though, they’ve become used to hotshot athletes leaving town to play up in Phoenix, where they’ll get more exposure to major college scouts.
But not Justin Gaethje.
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He didn’t leave until it was time to go to college, and even today he comes back home. He stays with his parents and shops at Walmart, just like anybody else.
“I’ve seen him at two restaurants,” Armando Armijo said.
Armijo works in the Kempton auto body shop. He never misses a fight and can describe details of some of Gaethje’s biggest matches.
“The Barbosa fight,” he said. “That and his Ferguson fight. He really laid the hammer down on those ones.”
‘He didn’t want a tie’
Gaethje graduated from Safford High over a decade ago, but they still remember him. His picture is in the trophy case
right behind the team state title trophies he and his twin brother, Marcus, helped win.
Anybody who knew the brothers when they were kids will tell you that they pushed each other to greatness. There’s a story that when they were in the womb they had a brawl that Marcus won, he tossed Justin out and enjoyed 16 minutes of peace, all to himself. Justin’s been fighting for revenge ever since.
“Either that or Justin won the battle and got out first,” Caroline Gaethje, their mother, said.
She said they were always tussling. “I felt it,” she said. “It was a constant battle in there.”
Growing up, they did everything together. Same friends. Same teams. Wrestling. Football.
Together, they helped Safford beat Thatcher on the gridiron. People in town will tell you it’s one of the oldest and biggest rivalries in rural Arizona. Thatcher might have won the state title in 2006, but they lost to Safford 22-21 up at Eastern Arizona College.
Stafford assistant principal Tad Jacobson was on the field taking stats that day. Safford scored a late touchdown, making the score 21-20.
“Head coach Mike Dorrell asked, ‘ Do we win it or tie it?’” Jacobson said. “And Gaethje said, ‘ We win it.’”
The next play Justin, the quarterback, took the snap and ran behind Marcus, the tight end, and crossed the goal line for the game-winning score.
“He didn’t want a tie,” Jacobson said. “Everything on the line. We score the 2-point conversion and win the game with no time left. That’s Justin Gaethje.”
These days, Jacobson lives a few doors down from Marcus, who works in the copper business. He knows all about Khabib Nurmagomedov. So does everybody else in town, it seems.
Nurmagomedov beat Dustin Poirier, the last man to defeat Gaethje. He’s the first Muslim to win a UFC title, helping make him a hero in the United Arab Emirates. And his father, who taught him to fight growing up in Dagestan, died in July of COVID-19, providing an added layer of motivation.
But Safford isn’t worried.
The town is Justin Gaethje’s weapon.
And he knows it.
“This is huge for me,” Gaethje said. “Huge for my family. Huge for my country. Huge for the small town of Safford, Arizona. I’m so proud of that.”
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