The controversy surrounding Justin Gaethje’s gloves at the UFC’s White House card has drawn a direct response from one of the event’s lead regulators, who says the claims circulating online simply do not hold up.
Andy Foster, one of three officials tasked with overseeing UFC Freedom 250, stated that Gaethje’s equipment was checked and rechecked before he ever stepped out for his co-main event bout against Ilia Topuria.
“His gloves and wraps were fine and totally within regulations,” Foster said recently. “Also well inspected by multiple inspectors.”
The comment lands squarely against a wave of online speculation sparked by a YouTube creator who goes by Brendan Dorman MMA. In a video breakdown titled “The Anatomy of Impact / A UFC White House Analysis,” Dorman walked through broadcast footage frame by frame, pointing to what he described as an odd bulge forming inside Gaethje’s glove as the rounds wore on.
He framed it as a question worth asking rather than a formal accusation, repeatedly noting that his goal was to raise the issue for scrutiny rather than to declare wrongdoing.
Dorman built his case around the unusual setting of the event itself. Held on the South Lawn of the White House, the card took place on federal property, which meant it fell outside the reach of the D.C. Combat Sports Commission.
Oversight instead came through the Association of Boxing Commissions, which Dorman characterized as functioning more like a group of advisers than a traditional sanctioning body. In his telling, that setup created gaps in how equipment was tracked once the match ended, and he claimed Gaethje’s gloves and wraps were separated from any documented chain of custody shortly after the final bell.
From there, Dorman zeroed in on the visual evidence. He compared close-up pictures of Topuria’s palm, which he said looked unremarkable throughout the match, to images of Gaethje’s glove that appeared to show something firmer and more pronounced building up by the second round.
Under the sport’s standard rules, he noted, athletes are permitted only a single layer of gauze across the palm, and anything beyond that would represent a departure from what is allowed.
He did not stop at the gloves. Dorman also pointed to the yellowish tint on Gaethje’s feet during the match, floating the idea that it could be tied to some kind of hardening stuff rather than dismissing it outright.
To bolster the theory, he reached back to one of combat sports’ most notorious equipment scandals, the 2008 meeting between Antonio Margarito and Miguel Cotto, where Margarito was later caught using wraps that had been illegally stiffened. Dorman argued that cases like that tend to share a pattern.
“Two things are consistent about hand-loaded or glove-loading type matches in boxing,” he said. “The damage looks unnatural and the athlete taking the damage looks unnatural.”
Even so, Dorman was careful to draw a line between raising a question and making a formal charge. “This is all just me presenting something,” he said. “It’s opinion, not slandering. We’re not accusing.”
His closing request was less about Gaethje specifically and more about the process going forward, suggesting that any future meeting between the two men should include independent oversight of the wrapping procedure.
“Let’s going forward have some kind of moderation or neutrality when it comes to the hand wraps,” he said.
