Demetrious Johnson says he will fight for five more years
Demetrious Johnson has been in the conversation for the greatest fighter of all-time. The former UFC champion dominated the flyweight division and ran through the division twice before Henry Cejudo stopped ended his reign at UFC 227.
Now, Johnson is competing in ONE Championship and is fresh off his debut win. Although Johnson has been doing this for quite some time now, he still is only 32 years old. With that, the former champion says he has five years left of fighting before he retires.
“I give myself five more years in mixed martial arts then I’m done,” Johnson said on Ariel Helwani’s MMA Show. “Five years, I’ll be 37, I’ll be old. At the end of the day, the biggest thing I’ll say, the difference… It’s been since 2011… Was the last time I fought at 135 [pounds]. And for me making this weight cut… Or weighing in at 135… My body’s being able to recover a lot faster. So who knows, I might be able to postpone five years to seven years because I’m not having to put my body through that traumatic weight cut to make 125.
“It’s hard, man. For example, Eddie Alvarez, awesome dude, and to see what happened to him, it was one punch. It wasn’t a combination of punches, it was just one punch that landed in the right spot, hit him in the eye and I was like, ‘damn your eye is f*cked up,’ He could possibly go blind! One shot. So at the end of the day, man, why risk it? Why risk that happening to me if I can say, ‘you know what? You gotta cut it off at five years.’”
Ultimately, Demetrious Johnson has time to become ONE Championship’s flyweight champion, which most expect him to. For now, Johnson is waiting for the date of his next fight in the flyweight Grand Prix.
