Champ has bigger plan
Johnson eyes record, move up to 135
Few fighters in mixed martial arts history have been able to execute on the level of Demetrious Johnson, who defends his UFC flyweight title Saturday in a rematch with John
Dodson in UFC 191 at the MGM Grand Garden in Las Vegas.
The 29-year-old is deft at the kind of mid-fight adjustments that separate champs from contenders, and lately has been on an impressive streak of catching fight-ending submissions on command from his cage-side guru, Matt Hume. Johnson’s last win, via kimura submission over Kyoji Horiguchi, came with just one second left in a 25-minute bout he dominated.
Now Johnson is plotting a broader battle plan, to thoroughly clean out his division before looking to 135 pounds, a weight class in which he was also nearly flawless before the UFC instituted the 125-pound division and Johnson became its first and only champion.
“Once the time comes and I’ve broken the record and set the goals that I want to make, then I’ll start thinking about 135,” Johnson told the Herald during a media conference call last week. “When I got in this sport, this was a hobby for me, and right now I’m going for my seventh (straight successful) title defense. The record is held right now by Anderson Silva and it’s 10, so if I can break that, that would be an awesome thing. And to be able to have the most finishes as a flyweight — with knockouts, submissions, and TKOs — that’s another goal.”
Dodson is unfazed. He tested Johnson more than any flyweight to date when they met in 2013, putting the champ on skates with his heavy left hand en route to capturing 2-of5 rounds on many scorecards. He looks back on that lost chance with regret.
“Yeah, I had a missed opportunity of knocking his head off,” Dodson said. “I showed him way too much respect in that fight.”
The bout was a rare glimpse of Johnson struggling to set a fight on his desired course. The threat of Dodson’s left counter and his defensive wrestling instincts put “Mighty Mouse” in some hairy positions as he tried to close the distance and work the clinch strikes that proved to be his decided advantage.
Johnson concedes that Dodson was his toughest fight as champion, but said his flashes of vulnerability were more a function of the dynamics of his speedy weight class.
“You have two men in it who weigh 125 pounds, and we’re both 5-foot-3, and you’re in a 25-foot Octagon,” Johnson said. “You don’t get called for backing up, so if a person goes forward and another person backs up, it’s going to take a long time for that person to get to that other person.
“And if you look at that first fight, he is a counter-puncher, he likes to use movement and wait for his opponent to overextend. And eventually once he got tired and stopped running as much, I was able to get my wrestling and my clinch game. . . . At the beginning of the fight I was trying to get to him. I was going forward and he was going back. That’s why that happened.”
While he’s dispatched most of the contenders in the flyweight division’s top 10 — and if he wins Saturday will have done it twice to top dogs Dodson and Joseph Benavidez — Johnson said he still sees budding challengers who would make interesting fights, citing 2008 U.S. Olympic gold medalist Henry Cejudo, Sergio Pettis and Ryan Benoit. There’s hardly the fan clamor for those fights compared to super fights at 135, but Johnson said he’s grown tired of weighing such factors.
“At one point in time in my career, it was like, ‘ Oh, he never finishes nobody.’ Then next thing you know, I’m breaking people’s arms and making them tap out and knocking them out,” Johnson said. “And then next thing you know, it’s like, ‘Oh, I don’t like his personality.’ And it’s like OK, well, you know, if you don’t like who I am, I can’t help you there, buddy.”
Added Johnson: “You can’t make everyone in the world happy. Once you start trying to make everybody in the world happy and make the fans happy, then you’re going to lose sight of what’s more important, which is being the best mixed martial artist in the world. If you want to see great mixed martial arts, tune in when I fight. If you want drama and all that stuff, you guys can go watch ‘Bachelor in Paradise.’ ”
Heavy disappointment
When Fabricio Werdum upset the heavyweight pecking order by submitting longtime divisional king Cain Velazquez in June, it seemed a whole new universe of fresh challengers and matchups had opened up. So the UFC’s decision to order an immediate rematch disappointed some, including, it would seem, heavyweight mainstays Frank Mir and Andrei Arlovski, who face off for the first time on Saturday.
“I thought that actually it would mix up the division by having (Werdum) take over as champion, and I actually thought Andrei was going to get the title shot, I thought that was extremely interesting,” Mir said last week. “But pertaining to the immediate rematch, (Velasquez) is a great champion, so I guess you give him that opportunity.”
Arlovski — who edged Werdum in a 2007 fight — doesn’t want to talk about it.
“I have no comments about Fabricio Werdum,” he said. “I was disappointed. I thought Cain was going to beat him. Hopefully, one day I’m going to fight him again.”