For one fleeting moment on Saturday at UFC 197, it looked like Henry Cejudo might have something for Demetrious Johnson.
It occurred with one minute, 25 seconds gone in their co-main event bout for Johnson’s flyweight title. As the two fighters clinched near the center of the cage, Cejudo—a 2008 Olympic gold medalist for the United States in freestyle wrestling—took Johnson down with a pretty inside trip.
"Well, holy cow," we all thought.
If Cejudo could land takedowns on Johnson and maintain top position on the ground maybe he could—
And that’s about how long it lasted.
After roughly 20 seconds of keeping Cejudo tied-up in his guard, Johnson kicked the wrestler off him and sprang back to his feet. A bit more than a minute-and-a-half later, the fight was over. Johnson had stopped Cejudo with strikes, successfully defending his 125-pound title for the eighth straight time and handing Cejudo his first career loss.
"That's organic fighting right there,” Johnson said, as UFC color commentator Joe Rogan walked him through the slow-motion replay of his handiwork. “I am the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world and I'll continue to keep on [showing] it.”
You know what? He’s right about that last part.
Johnson will no doubt go on being a criminally underappreciated figure in the UFC landscape, but at this point, we must concede the man his point.
Especially after watching Jon Jones return to the cage after a 16-month absence and scuffle through a lackluster unanimous-decision win over the unheralded Ovince Saint Preux in the UFC 197 main event, there is no denying that Johnson is the best all-around fighter on the company’s roster at the moment.
Could he be the greatest of all time, as Rogan suggested multiple times during this weekend’s broadcast?
That feels like a stretch. At 29 years old, Johnson still has plenty of time to build his resume, and so trying to place him in the proper historical context might be unfair to all involved.
But if you admit that the pound-for-pound rankings are a snapshot of what’s happening in MMA right now and not some sort of lifetime achievement award, then there’s hardly a credible argument to rank Jones over Johnson at the moment.
At least until Jones fights Daniel Cormier to unify the light heavyweight title later this year and gets the chance to prove he’s shaken off the rust from the suspension he served in the wake of a 2015 hit-and-run accident, Johnson must be regarded as the best.
That might be a bitter pill for some people to swallow. UFC 197, after all, was largely billed as Jones' return, his chance to prove he was still the best MMA fighter on earth. The fact the he got upstaged by Johnson may not go down easily for everybody. To get to the headspace where we finally give Johnson his due, we have to acknowledge some things that have proved difficult for MMA fans throughout his career.
First, that a 5’3”, 125-pound fighter could be hailed as, essentially, the baddest man on the planet. Second, that Johnson is probably never going to be the fiery, trash-talking media darling who draws big numbers on pay-per-view. Third, now that he’s finished five of his last seven opponents, Johnson isn’t a “boring” fighter who simply hacks out one unanimous decision after another.
Johnson has fought twice a year every year since becoming the UFC’s inaugural flyweight titlist in 2012. As champion, he’s never missed significant time due to injury or suspension.
After Saturday night’s win, he’s defeated seven of the nine other fighters on Bleacher Report’s official 125-pound Top 10 rankings and now sits just a stone’s throw from tying Anderson Silva’s record for consecutive title defenses.
He hasn’t lost a bout since the creation of the flyweight division four years ago. The last time Johnson tasted defeat was in October 2011, when he dropped a unanimous decision in a 135-pound fight against current UFC bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz.
Johnson is an out-and-out virtuoso inside the cage, effortlessly mixing range-striking, clinch work, takedowns and ground skills at a speed that sometimes makes it feel like sensory overload to watch his fights in real time. He's so good and so fast, in fact, it can be difficult for casual observers to engage with him, since it’s often tough to tell what he’s doing unless you watch his fights really, really closely.
Johnson lords over the shallow 125-pound class in as dominant a fashion as anyone we’ve ever seen at any weight—though the division’s lack of depth both hurts and helps him.
Hurts, because it means it’s hard for the UFC to continue drumming up fresh challengers. Helps, because the fight company is forced to rush credible opponents into bouts against him, which makes it difficult to imagine anyone gaining the experience and Octagon-savvy necessary to beat him before they are thrown to the wolves.
Take Cejudo, for example.
Since debuting in the UFC in December 2014, the gold medalist has been looked at as an opponent who could maybe test Johnson one day. His grappling pedigree and natural feel for the MMA game—he was 10-0 prior to Saturday’s fight—made him seem like as formidable a title challenger as flyweight could produce.
Once he was in the cage at UFC 197, however, it was clear Cejudo wasn’t ready—and maybe he never will be. Johnson handled him easily, and now his victory stands as just another testament to the champion’s greatness.
Cejudo came out aggressively in the early going of their bout, looking to walk Johnson down as the champ kept him at bay with lightning-quick leg kicks and punches. Johnson initialed the clinches—where he has always been particularly dangerous—and mostly controlled the wrestler’s posture, constantly stabbing him with knees and the occasional shoulder strike.
Cejudo nabbed the one takedown, but it was his only bright spot, and he wasn’t able to do anything with it before Johnson got back to his feet.
Immediately after working his way off the ground, Johnson dinged Cejudo with a knee to the face and a series of hard knees to the body. As the champion measured the challegner against the fence, he slipped in an elbow to the side of Cejudo’s head and then stumbled him backward with another knee to the face.
This one hurt Cejudo badly. Before he could regain his composure, Johnson followed it with a straight left and then crumpled him to the canvas with yet another knee to the midsection. As Cejudo turtled up, Johnson followed with a series of punches that forced referee John McCarthy to stop the fight.
"There's no game plan,” Johnson said to Rogan when it was over. “I come in here and I just fight. My clinch is very dangerous. I have the best coaches in the world ... Once I got him off balance I threw the left knee to the liver and I heard him go ‘ughh’ and I [thought], 'It's over. I'm not backing up, let's go.'”
Moving forward, the biggest quandary for UFC matchmakers will be what to do with Johnson. The only two men left in the Top 10 he hasn’t beaten are No. 10 Zach Makovsky (who is just 1-3 in his last four bouts) and No. 6 Jussier da Silva (who most recently lost to Cejudo).
The idea of a superfight with Cruz will get some traction, but Cruz just regained his title in January and has a lot on his plate right now. He's set to defend against Urijah Faber at UFC 199 in June and has solid contenders like Raphael Assuncao and Aljamain Sterling also breathing down his neck.
Pulling Cruz out of the hunt at bantamweight to have him fight Johnson might not make sense right now.
So, for the time being, Johnson might have to settle for being the king of the UFC’s smallest castle.
Perhaps it can soften the blow a bit to know he’s also the best MMA fighter in the game today.
In a sport where mixing marital arts is the very point, Johnson’s palette of skills is unmatched at this juncture. Even Jones, who will likely go down as the greatest MMA fighter of all time, can’t contend with him at the moment in his reduced capacity.
Maybe Jones will prove against Cormier that he's back to being the king of the hill. But getting the chance to watch them both in such close proximity on Saturday night made it obvious that Johnson is firing on all cylinders right now, while Jones is still working his way back.
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