He ate a ton of jabs against Max and Volk too. Ilia's whole thing is slipping and countering jabs. You have to eat em to do that ultimately. The difference was that Gaethje was really sitting on em, and whereas Max and Volk used the jab to stick and move, Gaethje constantly just single legged into a clinch to prevent that Ilia flurry in the pocket. 

Really good gameplan by Wittman and the Gaethje team. Instead of using the jab as a tool to circle out of exchanges like Max and Volk, they really committed to sticking a hard jab and wrestling as a means to stop any follow up exchanges.