Las Vegas, Nevada He stands 5 feet 3 and weighs in at 125 pounds. He is virtually invisible.
Demetrious Johnson is a UFC champion, but unless you’re a serious mixed martial arts enthusiast, there’s a decent chance you don’t know him. You do know who Ronda Rousey is, and Conor McGregor, too. You also might remember Luke Rockhold from his leading-cad appearance on TV’s “Millionaire Matchmaker.” You recognize Jon Jones from the police blotter.
But the man nicknamed “Mighty Mouse,” with his superhero skills, flies under the radar.
Johnson (22-2-1) defends his flyweight championship belt for the eighth time on Saturday night, taking on unbeaten Olympic gold medal wrestler Henry Cejudo (10-0) at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.
The fight is the co-main event of UFC 197, an event headlined by Jon Jones’s return from suspension a year after a felony hit-and-run incident that also resulted in him being stripped of the light heavyweight title.
Jones’s top-billed fight is against 6th ranked Ovince Saint Preux, with the UFC feebly propping it up as an interim title bout.
Johnson’s fight is for a real belt, but he has to play second fiddle.
That’s because Jones, for all his foibles, is a marquee attraction, while Johnson, a 29-year-old who fights out of Parkland, Wash., has never quite caught on in a big way with the MMA fan base. Why? Maybe it’s his lack of foibles. He’s a nice guy who lets his sublime, heart-pumping combat game do his talking for him.
It certainly isn’t the octagon action that’s holding back Johnson’s star power. Inside the cage, “Mighty Mouse” embodies the elusive lightning of a different cartoon rodent, Speedy Gonzales. He is constant motion, fluid and graceful, a thing to behold if your eyes can keep up. To truly appreciate Johnson, though, a fan’s best tactic might be to DVR the fight and watch in slo-mo.
For the recorder to do its job, though, one first must tune in. And that’s been a baffling stumbling block, judging by Johnson’s relatively poor viewership numbers, especially on pay-per-view. His last two fights on pay TV had by far the lowest buy rates of the dozen or more PPV fight cards the UFC has presented in the past year.
Cejudo might draw added shine to Saturday’s fight with the gold medal he brought home from the 2008 Beijing Games. He was just 21 back then, and when he defeated Japan’s Tomohiro Matsunaga in the final at 55 kilograms (121 pounds), the Phoenix-based athlete became the youngest American to win Olympic gold in freestyle wrestling.
But Cejudo’s MMA resume, while unblemished, is still an early draft. Only four of his 10 fights have come in the UFC, and his list of conquests pales in comparison to what Johnson has faced. “Mighty Mouse” has largely cleaned out the flyweight division, though, so it was Cejudo’s turn to step up.
“I’m ready,” Cejudo told reporters last week. “I’m excited, and my weight is under control.”
That last part is no given. Cejudo missed the 125-pound flyweight limit multiple times early in his career, and when his UFC debut had to be canceled on fight day because he fell ill while cutting weight, promotion president Dana White insisted he move up 10 pounds to bantamweight.
Now Cejudo is back at 125 pounds and looking to seize control of the division. That will be a formidable challenge against the express train that is Johnson. If “Mighty Mouse” wins, he will match the string of title defenses Jones had amassed before being stripped of his light heavyweight belt following his arrest. It would leave Johnson two defenses away from Anderson Silva’s UFC record of 10. “That’s my goal,” Johnson has said. “That’s where my heart is.”
Yes, Johnson is looking to leave his mark on the sport. But no, he does not begrudge those who steal the spotlight. Working in the shadow of Jon Jones is nothing new for him. On the night back in 2012 when Johnson became the UFC’s first flyweight champion, his title fight with Joseph Benavidez was billed below a Jones title defense against Vitor Belfort.
“This isn’t the first time I ever shared the spotlight with Jon Jones, one of the greatest,” said Johnson. “I think it’s a treat to the fans that they get to see No. 1 and No. 2 compete in the same night again.”
Jones and Johnson are indeed at the top of most pound-for-pound MMA rankings. And those are the type of ratings that mean something to “Mighty Mouse.”
