Demetrious Johnson will be putting on a gi and entering a BJJ competition for the first time in a long time later this year at the IBJJF Master World Championship. The news has come as a bit of a shock to fans around the world, although Johnson has made a habit of taking on new challenges over the last few years. From a move to ONE Championship to a crazy mixed-rules fight with Rodtang Jitmuangnon, Johnson has been in search of new mountains to climb for quite some time. Although this isn’t anywhere near as high-profile as those events, this decision is no different really.
In fact, Johnson recently revealed to Ariel Helwani on an episode of The MMA Hour that it’s been almost 20 years since he last competed in the gi:
“Last time I done a Jiu-Jitsu tournament was… I was 18 years old.”
The opportunity to see Demetrious Johnson competing in a gi clearly doesn’t come around often and apparently his inspiration to enter the IBJJF Master World Championship came from a pretty unlikely source:
“For me the reason why, well my son does Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. He loves it, he’s gonna be down there competing and he asked me, he goes ‘Dad, why don’t you compete?’ and I was like ‘well, why don’t I?’ I tried to do it under the radar, you know? I signed up, didn’t tell anybody, there was only a couple of people who knew.”
Surprisingly considering Johnson’s reign as both the UFC and ONE Championship flyweight world champion, he’s apparently experiencing a fair bit of nerves ahead of the tournament too:
“It’s a challenge, it’s a 38-man bracket so I’ll probably get 5 or 6 matches. So, I’m excited man. I haven’t felt butterflies, anxiousness in a very long time. A very, very long time.”
While it’s not unusual to see MMA fighters competing in no gi tournaments, it’s far less common to see them competing in major IBJJF tournaments in the gi. Demetrious Johnson explained exactly why he made the decision to enter a gi tournament specifically:
“With Jiu-Jitsu it’s so much different because I wanna see where I’m at, and then when I jumped in the gi it was for me to take away my athletic ability and learn how to deal with the grip, and use the grip. I feel this is the only way for me to see where I’m at by going to Master Worlds, just to see where I’m at. 38-man bracket, go out there, do my best, and yeah, see what happens.”
It’s not just the challenge of competing in the gi that attracted Demetrious Johnson to the tournament either, apparently he actually prefers that form of Jiu-Jitsu anyway:
“I’m a gi guy…I love the complexity of what the gi brings to the game, to where when I’m in no gi I am so athletic can just shut sh*t down. Where it’s like, even guys who are 185(lbs), I’m like ‘you can’t pass my guard because you can’t grab handles, you can’t grab my legs, I can just move underneath.’ So the gi just brings so much more complexity to the game, I am fascinated by it.”
This might not be the last time that fans get to see Demetrious Johnson put on a gi for a BJJ tournament either, as he has a pretty big goal in mind for the near-future too:
“My goal is, potentially next year how I feel, I might try to do the 18-30 years old, the adult.”
The full interview with Demetrious Johnson where he discusses his upcoming appearance in a gi BJJ competition at the IBJJF Master World Championship was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of MMAFighting:
