Since Demetrious Johnson emerged as a player in the bantamweight division he has always been under-sized while stepping into the octagon with the best at 135-pounds but finally he gets his chance to play with people his own size inside the eight-sided cage.
The capacity crowd in Sydney, Australia were handed a treat for the UFC’s third offering to the folk down under pitting the fab four of 125-pounds against one another in two semi-final matches with the two emerging winners battling to crown a champion of the newly forced weight-class down the line.
Joseph Benavidez put on a jaw-shattering performance facing top-ranked Japanese star Yasuhiro Urushitani but tragedy struck the other half of the bracket with the highly competitive bout between Johnson and number-one ranked fighter Ian McCall being declared a draw.
When UFC ring announcer Bruce Buffer initially read out the score cards he told the world that Johnson had prevailed but a numerical error on behalf of the New South Wales athletic body occurred with the bout really being rendered a majority draw.
“There’s two sides to the coin – A lot of people think Ian McCall won and a lot of people think that I won and it is what it is, I won the first two rounds but it was a real tough fight, Ian McCall is the toughest dude I ever fought in my life and we’re gonna do it again, we’re gonna figure out who fights for the title” Johnson told MMASucka.com
After the fight there was no aggression between the two top-ranked flyweights as they both posed for pictures and did interviews together as if they hadn’t just beat each other silly inside a cage.
“There’s no blood between us and no animosity, this is just a business and a sport and I know we’re both looking forward to going in there and facing one another again” he says.
Fifteen minutes wasn’t enough for these two to settle the score last time so an additional ten minutes has been granted, a decision that put a smile on even the most jaded fight fans dial.
“My preparation for this fight was training for five rounds this time, before we were training for just a three-round fight and maybe the sudden death but this time we’re training for five rounds. As for preparations for him exactly, I’m working on my wrestling because that’s something I need to work on and my jiu-jitsu and really focusing on the holes in my game and making me a better fighter all round” he said.
Now we all remember the tales of BJ Penn running with a large rock underwater, the 125-pound D.C resident has his own unique ways of training his cardiovascular fitness.
It’s a ten-pound water brick and basically what you do is swim down to one end and swim down to the other without the brick then you grab the brick and swim underwater with the brick as far as you can go then you come up and tread water with the brick in your hand for 20 seconds,”
He continued “Then you drop the brick and swim to the other end and then swim back and wherever you dropped the brick that’s where you pick it up then swim underwater with the brick then go back and swim without the brick and repeat that [laughs].”
Joseph Benavidez will be watching on real closely this Friday night, the Team Alpha Male product feels that he is the number-one 125-pound fighter on the world but “Mighty Mouse” isn’t going to give up that title without a fight.
“I want to be number one very bad, I’d love to be the number-one fighter in the world at a weight-class and if I train hard I’ll do it.”
