By Lee Patterson
It only took Safford native Justin Gaethje 86 seconds to brutally knock out James Vick Saturday night in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Vick, who stands 6’3″, had an enormous reach advantage over Justin who is 5’11”. He tried to use his length to keep Gaethje away from him in the early seconds with some straight kicks to the body of Gaethje. When that didn’t work, Vick turned to backing away from The Highlight. Vick eventually back himself into the fence when Gaethje faked with a left jab before landing with a huge overhand right that turned the lights out for Vick. It took medical personnel several minutes to get Vick back to his stool and when Gaethje came to talk to him Vick tried to take him down out of instinct.
In the post fight interviews Gaethje told UFC On Fox that he worked on being more patient and picking his shots. It looks like that paid off for him. He was amazingly calm in his post fight interviews, maybe because he didn’t take a shot from Vick, who had called him the Homer Simpson of the UFC leading up to the fight.
Gaethje asked for a fight with Tony Ferguson after the fight but it looks like the next guy in line for him will be Kevin Lee is the #5 ranked lightweight.
