MMA Legend Demetrious Johnson has just signed up to make his black belt debut in the Master 2 featherweight division of the IBJJF Master World Championship 2024. There is currently 24 other competitors in the bracket at the time of writing but there’s still over a month left for competitors to sign up to the event, so the division will likely fill up even more. As always, the world’s biggest Master’s tournament has attracted a mixture of veteran competitors and coaches who will be looking to test themselves. Perhaps the biggest name in Johnson’s division is actually a former opponent of his, fellow MMA veteran Wilson Reis.
Reis once challenged Johnson for his UFC flyweight world championship all the way back in 2017, but Johnson won that fight by submission with an armbar. Reis will no doubt be eager to get some revenge and given his high level of Jiu-Jitsu, it seems as though a rematch between the two men is actually pretty likely. Although Johnson isn’t known as a BJJ competitor himself, he’s been diving much deeper into the world of professional grappling in the last year. In fact his first competitive appearance in the sport was at the IBJJF Master World Championship last year, where he won a gold medal in the brown belt version of this division.
He then won a gold medal at the IBJJF Pan Championship as well, along with a silver medal in the absolute division too. That series of fantastic performances is what led to Demetrious Johnson being promoted to black belt earlier this year and he’s wasted no time in making his debut at this level. Although Johnson will be coming in as one of the favorites to take home the title, it won’t be easy for him as he’ll be surrounded by fantastic grapplers and he’ll have to beat at least 4 of them in order to do it.
The IBJJF announced the news that Demetrious Johnson was going to make his black belt debut at the IBJJF Master World Championship 2024 in a recent post to their official Instagram account:
