Tony Ferguson warned ahead of UFC 249 that Justin Gaethje 'throws to kill'

• Justin Gaethje could drop Tony Ferguson in Saturday's lightweight fight in Florida according to a former UFC champion.
• The two UFC stars are the main event attraction at a behind-closed-doors event on May 9.
• Luke Rockhold told Insider that Gaethje "throws to kill" and hits harder than people who have already dropped Ferguson.
• Saturday's winner could challenge Rockhold's gym-mate Khabib Nurmagomedov later in the year. "Both present so many options and problems for Khabib," he said.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Justin Gaethje is the hardest puncher in the lightweight division, "throws to kill," and has the ability to floor Tony Ferguson in the UFC 249 main event on Saturday, May 9.

That is the opinion of former UFC middleweight champion Luke Rockhold, who told Insider this week that while Ferguson has developed so much as a mixed martial artist, he has been dropped by lesser punchers than Gaethje, and could therefore be dropped once again.

"Tony has grown so much as a fighter," Rockhold said, one week before the May 16 release of a movie in which he stars — "Cagefighter: Worlds Collide" — on Fite. "He's so wild, unpredictable … [but] Justin throws to kill."

A 31-year-old American with a collegiate wrestling background, Gaethje most commonly guns for a stoppage by knockout rather than submission and has finished 18 opponents this way, compared to one submission and two decisions out of 21 wins in total.

He fights at the VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville on Saturday riding a three-fight win streak — all by knockout via punches — against James Vick in 2018 then Edson Barboza and Donald Cerrone, both in 2019.

"If he lands … well, he hits harder probably than anybody in that division that Tony's really fought," Rockhold told Insider. "[And] we've seen Tony get dropped by lesser punchers."

UFC 249 was originally supposed to take place on April 18 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, with one of Rockhold's gym-mates at the American Kickboxing Academy, Khabib Nurmagomedov, defending his UFC lightweight championship against Ferguson.

With the New York event nixed because of the worsening spread of COVID-19 and it unclear if or when the show could go on as planned elsewhere, Nurmagomedov returned to Russia and then could not leave as the country went into its own coronavirus-enforced lockdown.

White then recruited Gaethje to replace Nurmagomedov for a mysterious event on Native American land in California on the same date, but after mounting political pressure from California gov Gavin Newsom, Disney, which owns UFC's broadcast partner ESPN, ordered UFC president Dana White to stop his event.

After rescheduling UFC 249 for May 9 in Florida, the Ferguson vs. Gaethje fight is finally going ahead as planned. The winner could even challenge Nurmagomedov for the title later in the year.

"We anticipated that fight for so long, hoping it's to be," Rockhold told us. "[But] whether it's Tony or whether it's Justin … you're going to get a helluva fight [against Nurmagomedov].

"Both present so many options and problems for Khabib," he said. "So I'm excited to see whatever happens in general, it's wild, anything can happen."

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Read the original article on Insider