LAS VEGAS — Justin Gaethje opened the Paramount era with a bang, dominating rising star Paddy Pimblett to win the interim UFC lightweight title by unanimous decision at UFC 324 on Saturday night at T-Mobile Arena.
Gaethje’s win gave him his second career interim lightweight championship and sets up a unification title fight against 155-pound champion Ilia Topuria, who stepped away last November amidst mounting personal issues but is expected to return at some point in 2026.
The 37-year-old Gaethje (27-5-0) largely controlled the bout, landing 56% of his significant strikes while succeeding on all three of his takedown attempts. He finished ahead on the judges’ scorecards 49-46, 49-46, 48-47.
“You can’t have that mentality (Pimblett has) when you come in here,” Gaethje said. “He needs to accept the worst possible outcome. That’s how you perform your best, when the pressure is the highest. I learned that early. It’s such a crazy sport, so I knew it was going to happen.”
Gaethje nearly finished Pimblett two minutes into the first round before Pimblett miraculously found his way out. The second round saw Gaethje nearly finish the Englishman for a second time in the closing seconds before Pimblett was narrowly saved by the bell.
Pimblett briefly found new life in the third, taking advantage of a tiring Gaethje, but the damage he suffered throughout the fight proved too much to overcome in the championship rounds as Gaethje eventually got his second wind in the fourth.
The loss was Pimblett’s first in UFC since joining from his native England, snapping a nine-fight winning streak and dropping him to 23-4-0 in his career, 7-1 in the UFC. Still, the resiliency the 31-year-old showed by putting on a five-round show with the company’s most notorious bomber saved his stock from falling too far with the loss.
“I’ve been here and done this too many times to try to think that it’s over, he’s quitting,” Gaethje said. “This guy was trying to hurt me the whole time. If I took my foot off the pedal for a second, he was on my ass, and he did a good job up until the last second. I really wanted to finish him.”
Sean O’Malley, one of the company’s biggest stars, ended a two-fight losing skid in the co-main event with a controversial unanimous decision victory over bantamweight Song Yadong of China.
The first two rounds both could have arguably gone to Song, but the third round made all the difference on the cards as O’Malley (19-3-0) finished strong with a convincing third round against the 28-year-old Song (22-9-1), which proved to be the difference.
“The first two rounds, he took me down at the end of both of them, but he didn’t really do anything,” said O’Malley, 31. “I don’t know. I feel like I didn’t even know I got hit. Tim (Welch) said there was a video, he hit me with like a left hook, but I just feel like I didn’t take any damage other than inflicting damage on myself from kicking him.”
The judges each scored it 29-28 for O’Malley.
Predictably, O’Malley called out bantamweight champion Petr Yan in his postfight interview. O’Malley beat Yan in their first meeting at UFC 280 in October 22, but Yan’s stunning upset of Merab Dvalishvili with a lights-out performance at UFC 323 has added a new level of intrigue for the potential rematch.
Waldo Cortes-Acosta of the Dominican Republic defeated Derrick Lewis by KO/TKO at 3:14 in the second round. Cortes-Acosta (17-2-0) dominated the 40-year-old Lewis for the duration of the heavyweight fight, landing 72% of his total strikes, all but two of which were significant. Meanwhile, Lewis (29-13-0) only landed 19% of his total strike attempts and had zero seconds of control time.
Natalia Silva of Brazil defeated Rose Namajunas by unanimous decision in a potential women’s flyweight title eliminator, although the controversial outcome was met with unanimous dismay from a Vegas crowd that clearly believed Namajunas (15-8-0) did enough to pull off the upset against Silva.
The performance marks Silva’s 14th straight victory and her eighth consecutive in the flyweight division to improve her overall record to 20-5-1. More importantly, it may line her up for a title shot against Valentina Shevchenko later this year.
The opening fight of the main card saw heavily favored Brazilian fighter Jean Silva rebound from his loss against Diego Lopes in September, defeating England’s Arnold Allen (20-4-0) in a slugfest that was decided in the third round on two of three official scorecards.
Silva (17-3-0) landed 55% of his strikes and succeeded on four of six takedown attempts. After the match, he declared himself as the next competitor for the featherweight championship after next Saturday’s title rematch between Lopes and champion Alexander Volkanovski at UFC 325 in Sydney.
Dominick Cruz, a two-time bantamweight champion and the division’s inaugural belt holder, was announced as the first member of UFC’s 2026 Hall of Fame class at the conclusion of the preliminary show. Cruz will be inducted into the Modern Era Wing, which honors fighters who debuted after the first sanctioned UFC event under unified rules was held on Nov. 17, 2000. He retired in 2025 after repeated injuries.
–Will Despart, Field Level Media
