Justin Gaethje isn’t jumping on the Ilia Topuria “quitter” train. After their wild UFC Freedom 250 showdown ended with the Spanish-Georgian’s corner stopping the fight before the fifth round, the internet wasted no time going after ‘El Matador’. His undefeated run was over, his undisputed lightweight title was gone, and fans were already roasting him for not going till the end.

Justin Gaethje, though? He’s not buying the quitter talk. The newly crowned lightweight champ knows exactly what it’s like to have coaches make tough calls in the corner, and he believes Ilia Topuria’s team simply did what they were supposed to do: protect their fighter.

“He definitely should have quit on the stool,” he said on One Night With Steiny. “He didn’t quit on the stool; his body was too compromised to continue fighting.

“He didn’t make the call; his coaches made the call because they’re there to protect him. My coaches are in my corner to protect me in those times.”

For ‘The Highlight’, there’s a pretty big difference between a fighter throwing in the towel himself and a corner stepping in because they know their guy has taken too much damage.

Ilia Topuria never made that call. His coaches did. And from Justin Gaethje’s point of view, that’s literally what a corner is there for. If a fighter’s body is too compromised to keep going safely, the coaches have to step in and protect him.

El Matador’ had walked into the fight undefeated and had quickly become one of the UFC’s biggest stars. Nobody expected him to lose, let alone have his corner pull him out before the final round. For a lot of fans, that made the ending even harder to swallow.

Justin Gaethje, though, has no interest in piling on the former champ. If anything, he sees Ilia Topuria’s corner doing exactly what a corner is supposed to do. It’s a pretty different situation from recent fights where fighters have told their teams they were struggling or were clearly taking a ton of damage, only to get sent right back out there.

For ‘The Highlight,’ protecting a fighter comes before toughing it out for another five minutes

But while Justin Gaethje is pushing back against the criticism aimed at Topuria, there’s one thing he absolutely isn’t letting slide: The accusation that ‘The Highlight’ was loading his gloves.

Justin Gaethje laughs off Ilia Topuria’s loaded-glove accusation

While the fan narrative was set against him, Ilia Topuria threw another little wrinkle into the whole conversation surrounding this feud, suggesting Justin Gaethje may have done something unusual with his gloves before their championship fight.

“Next time I’ll make sure they check Justin’s gloves so he doesn’t put anything weird on them. See you soon,” Topuria wrote on X earlier this month after revealing that his medical tests were complete and he was ready to make his return.

‘The Highlight’, though, doesn’t seem particularly bothered by the accusation. Instead, the lightweight champ chalked it up to the madness of MMA’s social media era, where pretty much anything can be turned into a headline, a viral post or a quick hit of engagement.

“I think the internet’s crazy, man,” Gaethje said. “It’s clickbait, engagement; we’re farming out here. We’re farming for interactions.

“That’s the game. I don’t like the game, but I’m going to have to play the game.”

Ilia Topuria’s latest comments are a pretty big shift from how things looked right after the fight. The former champ congratulated Justin Gaethje in the immediate aftermath, but things have clearly gotten a lot more heated since then.

‘The Highlight’, for his part, doesn’t seem interested in turning the glove accusation into some massive back-and-forth. He appears more than happy to let the comments fly without adding more fuel to the fire.

For now, ‘El Matador’ and his team are still pushing for an immediate rematch. Whether Justin Gaethje is willing to give him one, though, is a completely different story.

After all, Arman Tsarukyan just made his own case with a dominant first-round knockout of Mauricio Ruffy at UFC 331, adding another name to the growing list of contenders waiting in line.

So if Justin Gaethje is ready to defend his belt again, he certainly won’t be short on options. But no matter who ends up getting the next call, the champion has already made one thing crystal clear: he doesn’t see ‘El Matador’ as a quitter.

In his eyes, Ilia Topuria’s corner simply made the call it was there to make.