Rumoured Paddy Pimblett opponent Justin Gaethje provides major update on UFC title picture
After Pimblett dominated Michael Chandler en route to a stoppage win in April, many fans were finally forced to accept the Liverpudlian as a top contender at 155lb. Then, in June, the Briton's old rival Ilia Topuria knocked out Charles Oliveira in rapid fashion to win the lightweight title.
Those factors could combine to set up a grudge match between Pimblett and Topuria for the belt, although the consensus is that a bout between 'Paddy The Baddy' and Gaethje also makes sense.
However, Gaethje has now doubled down on a previous claim that he will not fight anyone other than the champion next, and that he could leave the UFC if he is not given a title shot.
When asked if he would face Pimblett next, the American told ESPN on Tuesday (22 July): 'Absolutely not. If that's the route that they want me to take, then I don't believe that they need me anymore. You know what I mean?
'I know that sounds petty or whatever, but I'm No 3. I'm 3-1 in my last four, the champion was calling to fight me, they vacated. They bring a new guy in, and they give a guy that's 2-2 the fight.'
Gaethje, 36, was referring to Islam Makhachev's desire to fight him, before the Russian gave up the belt with an eye on a welterweight title shot. Topuria then stopped Oliveira (2-2 in his previous four bouts) to win the vacant strap.
'So if their algorithm and their math tells them just to use me until I get beat,' Gaethje continued, 'then I'm going to have to really reevaluate what I'm doing here, because I signed up for a merit-based system.
'I have lived by that, and if they want to give Arman [Tsarukyan] the fight, which... Arman s*** the bed, had the fight; I had the fight, but I took another fight for them. He had the fight, but pulled out because his back hurt. Those are two different scenarios [...] I'm going to be upset about that.'
Gaethje was referring to the possibility that Tsarukyan could be next for Topuria, despite the Armenian-Russian pulling out of a title shot against Makhachev in January. One day before that scheduled fight, Tsarukyan withdrew while citing a back injury. Meanwhile, Gaethje fought and beat Rafael Fiziev – for the second time – in March, despite Makhachev's wish to face him.
Although Tsarukyan has a claim to a title shot, it was Pimblett who was brought into the cage to face off with Topuria after the latter won the lightweight gold.
'I knew that it was a mistake, I knew that it wasn't the UFC's doing,' Gaethje said. 'I knew it was kind of just what was happening because of the environment with Joe [Rogan, UFC commentator] calling him in.
'I was obviously upset. My nephew was there with me, I walked out with both of my fingers in the air. At first, while [Topuria] was doing his interview, they were trying to put me and Arman in camera frame together – because I was trying to exit, he was right behind me, and they were filming him.
'And I kept moving to get out of the way so they could film him, and they kept readjusting and putting me in frame. I was like, 'What are you doing?' [A camera operator was] pointing at both of us two, saying he was trying to get us in a frame together. So, as Paddy and [Topuria] are in there, they're trying to put me and Arman in a frame.
'And I was like: 'F*** you, get that f*****g camera away from me. You f*****g wish that you were going to do this right now. Go f*** yourself.''
Despite the pressure that Gaethje is putting on the UFC to give him a title fight, with the potential that the former interim champion leaves the promotion amid this episode, he has refused to retire from MMA.
'I don't even want to entertain that conversation,' Gaethje said, 'because like I said: I have all the desire to compete. If I felt that in any way, then I would be done here.
'I just want to – obviously, from a biased perspective – be recognised as the most consistent and one of the top guys in the world. I did what I did. How many more fights do I have to... If I fight fights where if they win they get a championship, and then I win and it's still, 'I'm maybe going to have to fight someone else,' this is not the situation that I wanted to get myself in.
'And this is the situation I'm going to keep myself from. And that's where we're at.'
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New York Times
an hour ago
- New York Times
The ESPN-NFL megadeal looks and feels like a big trade. So we're grading the participants.
The dust has settled from the formal announcement of the blockbuster deal between ESPN and the NFL, with the league swapping NFL Network, linear rights to RedZone, NFL Fantasy and other content assets to ESPN for a 10% equity stake in the network. This isn't a traditional sports 'trade,' in which teams exchange star talents or draft picks, but it evoked that feel: two powerhouse franchises trying to improve through strategic additions and divestitures. Advertisement With the caveat that the agreements could be a year from formal approval, let's do what we normally would around any big trade and offer an evaluation through trade grades: ESPN: A As longtime Moffett Nathanson media analyst Robert Fishman simply put it, this is a 'major win for ESPN.' The network is now fused at the hip with the most valuable league in sports, which is a heck of a hedge against the NFL ever even considering a split. That surety — along with NFL Network being added to its portfolio — turns into new leverage when ESPN negotiates distribution fees with cable companies or bundled streamers. Most importantly, as ESPN launches its new direct-to-consumer service, it will have the tonnage of NFL Network content (on top of ESPN's existing NFL coverage, which wasn't exactly skimpy); the carrot of RedZone; access to NFL Fantasy's huge database of super-fans and an 'anchor tenant' of the most popular programming in sports. (Remember, while the new ESPN DTC service is most valuable to fans who don't have cable or a bundled streaming service, ESPN will be thrilled to have every fan with a cable or YouTube TV account consume their content directly through the network's own app, at no additional cost.) NFL: A There are few deals in its long history in which the league doesn't end up a big winner. In this case, the NFL offloads media assets it has been trying to shed for years (NFL Network and the lease on the real estate that houses it), while retaining ownership of key elements like NFL+ and digital distribution rights for RedZone. It has a new partnership with a company highly motivated to give NFL Network even more prominence. It retained flexibility to continue to sell additional live-game packages (see below). Last but certainly not least: The 10% equity could turn into a meaningful exit opportunity if and when Disney spins off ESPN into its own entity. Advertisement NFL Network: B+ It goes from a bit unloved within the league P&L to a new jewel in ESPN's empire. As The Athletic's Andrew Marchand's wrote last week: 'NFL Network was plagued by cutbacks for years, even though the league is a multibillion-dollar juggernaut. ESPN is expected to invest in improving NFL Network programming, according to sources briefed on its plans. 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Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Nick and Terry Saban's charity donates over $775K to nonprofit groups
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Indianapolis Star
3 hours ago
- Indianapolis Star
Why is Team Penske considering replacing Will Power when he's been its best driver this year?
Show Caption Since 2022, Will Power has more points, podiums and top-5s than either of his Team Penske teammates. The 44-year-old Power has just three races left on his current deal with Team Penske in his 17th season with the team. PORTLAND – As the IndyCar paddock waits – team owners with open seats and free agent drivers – speculation on Will Power's future swirls quicker by the day. Will Team Penske, the winningest team in IndyCar, cast aside, fail to come to terms with or simply be unable to provide a seat for the driver who has stood on the top step more times in Victory Lane for Roger Penske in American open-wheel racing than any other? The same driver who leads the team in points this season and has racked up more points, podiums and top-5s the last four years combined? That Silly Season decision will either send much of the rest of the paddock into motion, or keep what otherwise feels like a paddock nearly full of content teams and drivers standing pat for this coming offseason as they enter a 2026 campaign expected to be ripe with driver movement. At the center of it all sits a 44-year-old Will Power – 45 on day of next year's season-opener – who's spent 17 seasons with seven different teammates at Team Penske and finds himself in a contract year during the program's worst season in more than a quarter-century. Zero wins. Five podiums. 14 DNFs, all spread across 42 starts in 2025 for the Team Penske IndyCar trio. At IndyCar's most recent stop at Laguna Seca, all three cars managed to take the checkered flag for just the third time in the last two months (nine races in all). And Power finds himself having the least-bad string of bad days and the most decent-to-solid ones among his teammates, presently sitting 9 th in points with Scott McLaughlin 12 th and Josef Newgarden 15 th. But Newgarden and McLaughlin, 12 and nine years Power's junior, respectively, inked new multi-year contract extensions within the last 14 months, and so it's Power, despite outperforming both of them this year and across the four-year stretch since McLaughlin's second full-time campaign, who finds himself potentially on the chopping block. 'Can you believe the year I'm having, in a contract year? Two engine failures in two race weekends. Just one of those things. Not bad luck. It just happens at times,' Power remarked at Toronto, reflecting on a pair of race weekends that saw him sandwich a podium in Race 1 at Iowa in between a pair of DNFs at Mid-Ohio and Iowa's second race of the weekend. At that point, he'd suffered three DNFs over his last five starts – all thanks to mechanical failures not of his own doing. 'Can only smile about it because I've been in the sport a long time,' he continued. 'I just know these sort of things come round. It's very typical of life that a bad year would play out when you're trying to get a contract. 'Yeah, man, but I love it here. I do. I really hope I'm back next year.' Words both spoken and delivered like a man exasperated by his results, frustrated feeling as if they could somehow impact him when they're largely not reflective of his own performance and walking on eggshells, very much uncertain of whether this may be his last shot racing with a championship-caliber organization in IndyCar. Privately, he's made remarks this summer to those around him feeling as if 'they want to get rid of me.' Why Will Power has been Team Penske's most consistent driver since 2022 So why would they? From a pure results standpoint, there's just not any reason that holds water. A quick look at Power's 2025 campaign shows this: >> A run of four consecutive top-7 finishes (and seven overall), including two podiums >> Three mechanical failures in the span of five races – including one after starting on pole at World Wide Technology Raceway >> An Indy 500 all but destroyed by the team breaking a rule that left him starting last instead of inside the top-12 >> Two very blah days outside the top-10 (on days where no one at Team Penske had any speed to speak of either) >> A season-opening multi-car crash triggered by Power himself Seven times, Power has been the team's highest-finishing driver across 14 races where he has more top-10s (seven versus six (McLaughlin) and five (Newgarden), more top-5s (five versus four for McLaughlin and two for Newgarden) and as many podiums as any of his teammates (two versus two for Newgarden and one for McLaughlin). Dating back to the start of Power's title-winning 2022 campaign, Team Penske's most veteran pilot has a chokehold on the bulk of the driver vs. driver statistics with his teammates, including points (1,772 – 10 more than Newgarden, 116 beyond McLaughlin), podiums (22 – two more than McLaughlin, three more than Newgarden) and top-5s (30 – two more than McLaughlin, five more than Newgarden). Though Power trails his teammates in wins over that span (four vs. 11 from Newgarden and seven from McLaughlin), his consistency clearly has and continues to out-weigh his teammates' propensity for a few more top-level Sundays. During that stretch, he won the team's most recent IndyCar title (2022), shouldered immense stress and turmoil off-track in 2023 as his wife, Liz, fought for her life and then should've finished tops on the team in points after sitting second only to Alex Palou for a large chunk of the closing stretch of the 2024 campaign, only for faulty seatbelts in the season-finale drop him from 2 nd to 4 th in the championship standings. David Malukas seems set as Power's heir apparent Waiting is a newly-minted Indianapolis 500 runner-up who's nearly half Power's age, has shown flashes of serious promise and speed, and who has some sort of entanglement with Team Penske for the future, whether formal and official or otherwise. AJ Foyt Racing's David Malukas sits just 13 points back of Power entering this weekend's race at Portland. The up-and-coming star sports a baby-blue Gallagher livery typically seen on the No. 3 of McLaughlin that serves as much of a reminder as any of just how close the 23-year-old sees to be to formally joining Team Penske. He races for a team that shares a technical alliance with the Penske program and has his full-season entry seemingly funded by Penske-aligned sponsors. In any other year, his proximity to Power would suggest a changing of the guard in the No. 12 was not only imminent, but necessary. But when you take a step back and consider the pair's present situations and their trajectories over the last couple years, a change heading into 2026 would seem mighty hasty. For one, Malukas has spent the last two years inside four different organizations – two years at Dale Coyne Racing, moonlighting at Arrow McLaren for just over half a calendar year without any race starts as an offseason mountain biking injury first sidelined him and then led to his dismissal. He'd find a lifeline at Meyer Shank Racing at last season's halfway point and ride a rollercoaster to the end of the year before signing with Foyt. In short, one of the youngest drivers in the paddock has known very little consistency and his results through 58 starts – 15 top-10s, five top-5s and three podiums – point to a driver who has potential but still needs a year or so for it to begin to fully form. In fact, if you consider Malukas is in Year 3.5 of his IndyCar career (having missed half of what should've been Year 3), his progression tracks rather similarly to a young Josef Newgarden, who spent five seasons within the programs of Sarah Fisher and Ed Carpenter and in that time transformed from a back-marker of a rookie to a 4 th -place championship finisher by Year 5. Malukas is just 28 points ahead of his Foyt teammate Santino Ferrucci (who missed Toronto after a gnarly race day morning warmup crash) and hasn't nearly reached the run of consistency that Ferrucci laid down a year ago, with 11 top-10s and two top-5s in 17 starts, culminating in a 9 th -place points finish as the top non-Big-4 driver in the championship, and there's reason to wonder if Malukas is quite ready to take that next step in 2026. Twice this decade, Team Penske has been forced to make tough decisions on an accomplished veteran, but in both instances – Juan Pablo Montoya in 2016 and Helio Castroneves in 2017 – there was more than just a rising star or a need to drop back down a car that seemed to warrant such a move. They were lagging behind their teammates, too, with Montoya (41 years old at the time) finishing 8 th in points behind the rest of Team Penske that went 1-2-3 in 2016, and with Castroneves (42 at the time) taking 4 th in 2017 as Newgarden and Simon Pagenaud battled down to the wire in a 1-2 points finish and Power won three times with seven podiums in 5 th. As far as the organization has faltered, from a results standpoint, in 2025, Power remains the class of his team and in his lowest of lows remains a smidge ahead of the driver said to be in line to take his place. Roger Penske faces a decision: Will Power or David Malukas? Where this story ultimately end is likely to depend on the contents of the very private conversations and negotiations taking place behind closed doors between Penske, Power, his manager, ex-driver Oriol Servia; Penske Corp. president Bud Denker and new Team Penske IndyCar and sportscars president Jonathan Diuguid. Is Power willing to accept a one-year deal to remain in his seat? If so, that would seem like the best result best for all parties, allowing the Team Penske legend an opportunity to return to the form of years' past, while giving the program some much-needed consistency and stability, and Malukas another season to inch closer to his potential. After all, outside McLaughlin's rookie campaign in 2021 after three consecutive Super Cars titles, Team Penske has rarely served as a training ground for IndyCar talent. But a two-year deal for Power – or more generally-speaking the opportunity to go out on his own terms at a team he's driven 17 seasons for and where he's delivered two titles, one Indy 500 win and more IndyCar wins than any Penske driver before him – would either put Team Penske at risk of losing Malukas or be wholly incompatible with whatever deal they struck with the young driver. Eventually, Power's time in the series will end, but it was here a year ago in the wake of his dominant Portland victory where the Team Penske driver staunchly refuted the idea he was considering retiring. Earlier this year, he said he felt as if he had five more seasons in him and could run full-time right up close to the start of his 50s at or near his present performance level. The 44-year-old is likely to finish tops in the organization in points yet again. Can a team whose top priority this offseason should be regaining its speed, reliability and consistency afford to lose that in one of the IndyCar team's longest-tenured current employees while in the midst of a managerial and engineering transformation? That's why they call him 'The Captain.' Share your feedback to help improve our site!
