What has changed since Justin Gaethje and Dustin Poirier first fought?

It is quite common for folks to come across my significant strikes landed/absorbed per minute scatter plots on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter and comment on the absurd placement of Justin Gaethje’s dot.

Gaethje made his UFC debut in 2017, and he already had the reputation of being an action fighter thanks to some ridiculous contests under the World Series of Fighting banner. In his UFC debut, he landed 104 significant strikes, absorbed 91 significant strikes and ultimately finished Michael Johnson last in the second round.

In that one fight, Gaethje landed 10.61 significant strikes per minute and absorbed 9.29. He had only a +1.32 differential, but both of his offensive and defensive striking numbers were well ahead of the field.

Now after 11 fights in the Octagon, his striking stats have come down, but he is still clearly a statistical outlier. He lands 7.38 significant strikes per minute, which is the fifth best rate among ranked fighters, behind only Sean O’Malley (7.43), Tom Aspinall (7.65), Sergei Pavlovich (8.72) and Casey O’Neill (8.77). Gaethje also absorbs 7.66 per minute, which is the worst strike absorption rate among ranked fighters. It is even higher than the rate of Calvin Kattar (7.10) who absorbed a UFC record 445 significant strikes against Max Holloway.

One would expect that a fighter with numbers like Gaethje would come forward and throw with reckless abandon. However, he is much more measured than you would think. Yes, he does throw with very high volume, but it is not necessarily commensurate with his landing numbers. While his significant strikes landed per minute rate is fifth among ranked fighters, he attempts 12.16 significant strikes per minute, which ranks 20th among the same group.

Gaethje accomplishes his striking rate by being exceedingly accurate. He lands 60% of his significant strike attempts, and he is accurate when striking all three target areas. He lands 51% of his significant strike attempts to the head, 80% to the body and 88% to the legs.

Part of the reason why his overall accuracy is so high is that a large portion of his landed significant strikes are leg kicks. To date, 27.68% of his landed significant strikes have been leg kicks. That is the 12th highest proportion of leg kicks among ranked UFC fighters.

Defense remains an issue for Gaethje. MMA hipsters like to point out that his striking defense has improved, and the numbers somewhat back up this idea. However, he still absorbs a lot more strikes than your average fighter.

This, of course, was a major issue in his first encounter with Poirier. In that contest, Gaethje seemed more than willing to close the distance and stand directly in front of his opponent. He was his normal accurate self as he landed 54% of his significant strike attempts and 50 of his 115 landed significant strikes were leg kicks.

However, Poirier had the much higher volume in the fight. He attempted 351 significant strikes compared to only 212 for Gaethje. In terms of significant head strikes landed, Poirier had the edge 142 to 56. In order to reverse this result, Gaethje will need to do a much better job of controlling distance and not trading advantageous striking positions for the ability to land his leg kicks and other strikes.

In this rematch, Poirier might also have to be conscious of defensive liabilities. Although he has not absorbed nearly as many significant strikes as Gaethje on a per-minute basis, he has accumulated a lot of absorbed strikes in his UFC career. He has absorbed 1288 significant strikes, which is the sixth most significant strikes absorbed by a ranked UFC fighter. Of those 1288 significant strikes, 833 were head strikes. That is the seventh most significant head strikes absorbed by a ranked fighter.

A slightly more refined version of Gaethje and a slightly physically degraded version of Poirier could lead to this fight having a different result than their first encounter. Considering the current trajectory of each fighter, that seems perhaps like the likely scenario despite the result of their original meeting in 2018.