Demetrious Johnson Isn’t Planning On Jump To Bantamweight Just Yet
Demetrious “Mighty Mouse” Johnson may just be the most dominant champion in the UFC today, and he doesn’t seem to have any plans on taking his talents to a different weight class – for now.
Johnson recently tied former UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva’s UFC title defense record of 10 when he defeated Wilson Reis this past April, submitting the Brazilian via third round armbar. He is currently scheduled to make what would be a record-breaking 11th consecutive title defense against Ray Borg in the main event of the UFC 215 pay-per-view (PPV) next week (Sat. September 9, 2017) from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
“Mighty Mouse” recently took part in a media conference call to promote the event, and was asked about the possibility of jumping up to bantamweight once he breaks the title defense record at flyweight. After a recent spat with UFC President Dana White about the possibility of fighter former UFC bantamweight champ TJ Dillashaw, Johnson is now aware at the amount of people who have been calling him out to fight inside the Octagon (quotes via MMA Junkie):
“Everybody keeps throwing my name out of their mouth,” Johnson said. “And for me, I’m just focused on doing what I do best and cleaning out my division. But everybody in the UFC, everybody in the world, they say, ‘He’s the most boring fighter. He doesn’t sell any pay-per-views.’ But everyone keeps wanting to fight me. I don’t understand why they keep saying that.
“That makes me happy that everybody keeps bring up my name. If that was to happen, we’ll all sit down like men and negotiate, whether that would be at 125 or 135, whose title is defended. … It’s all about negotiating.”
Johnson doesn’t have any desire to move up to 135 pounds anytime soon. Not only does the flyweight want to break the consecutive UFC title defense record with 11 – he wants to shatter it:
“A friend of mine said, ‘You know, 10, that’s attainable. Eleven, that’s attainable.’ He goes, ’15 is (expletive) legendary. Why don’t you just go for 15?’ You know what? Why not?” Johnson said. “I mean, I’m 31 years old. I feel good. You’ve got a lot of new, young, up-and-coming guys coming into the division. So why not keep on doing it as long as I can? It’s not like 135 is going anywhere.
“When I get to 35, 36, 37 years old, when I’m tired of dieting … then I’ll go to 135. Right now I’m focused on setting the record as high as I can. And then if the money is right, we can go up to 135 and let’s make it happen.”
