Justin Gaethje is a professional prize fighter currently based out of Arvada Colorado. 

Gaethje started wrestling with his twin brother when they were four-year-olds back home in Safford, Arizona. After two high school state championships, he chose UNC for the season changes, the snow, the city of Greeley, the chance to get away from bad influences back home, and most importantly, wrestling.

He arrived at UNC in 2007 and went on to earn the first Division I All-American honors in the program's history, earning seventh place in the 2010 nationals.

He dipped into MMA when fighters trained with his wrestling team on campus at The University of Northern Colorado. He started taking amateur fights during summers, fighting and winning a total of seven times. He earned his nickname, "The Highlight," because he'd just pick people up and slam them down, he says. After all, he'd never trained for MMA or learned fighting technique.

Even if he didn't have formal training in his early fighting days, he had what his current coach Trevor Wittman, owner of Grudge Training Center in Arvada, calls the "walk of a champion." Gaethje is coachable, willing to learn, makes good intuitive decisions while fighting, does more than he's asked, has a will to win, and will do anything for anybody.

Many of those qualities stood out as Gaethje studied Human Services at UNC. One of his professors, Jill Bezyak, says he could always make the class laugh, especially if he sensed his classmates getting tense.

"He's one of those people that, probably without knowing it, works to help other people feel better," Bezyak says. "He can operate at whatever level is needed."

He takes that sense with him both into the human services field — he wants to work with at-risk youth when he retires from fighting — and into the cage.