Demetrious Johnson was recently giving his reactions to the UFC 319 main event and he took aim at a certain subset of MMA fans in particular. In fact, they are probably the most vocal group of MMA fans in the entire community. Everyone watching a combat sport enjoys seeing finishes of course and knockouts are always entertaining, but there’s a hardcore group of fans who don’t enjoy watching grappling at all unless there’s a quick submission involved. Obviously they’re going to be disappointed in pretty much every event they watch, because there’s always going to be elite wrestlers and BJJ black belts on the card.
The topic came up when Johnson was watching Khamzat Chimaev dominate Dricus Du Plessis on the ground to win the middleweight world title. It was a convincing decision win but almost the entire fight took place with Chimaev in control on the ground, and Johnson addressed the fans who weren’t happy with that fact:
“If you guys don’t want to watch grappling and wrestling and Jiu-Jitsu, don’t watch UFC. Don’t go watch One Championship. Go watch line fighting. Go watch Glory. Go watch Kickboxing. Go watch Muay Thai right?”
Demetrious Johnson also broke down Chimaev’s basic gameplan and how he makes his grappling work in MMA for his fans:
“He’s just wrestling. That’s all he’s doing is wrestling. He shoots in, gets their back, goes two-on-one, steps in front of that lead knee, and just gets heavy. You get heavy. You get heavy. That’s literally all he’s doing to control.”
He then addressed one of the only controversial elements of the fight, that referee Marc Goddard decided to return them to standing when Du Plessis was being controlled and Chimaev was on top:
“I disagree with that stand up both times. There’s no reason why the ref should have stood him up. This is a match. It’s up to DDP (Dricus Du Plessis) to get to a better position, to be able to better himself, to be able to compete.”
He then addressed whether a wrestling-heavy gameplan is fan-friendly, and whether that actually matters:
“This is a sport. It’s not the most exciting way to win a match but those are techniques that DDP wasn’t able to defend or anything like that right? Like the actual competing of mixed martial arts is a sport.”
Johnson is right of course, Chimaev is taking his best path to victory in the ruleset he’s competing under. As an elite wrestler, his most likely chance of success is always going to involve taking his opponents down and anyone facing him needs to come prepared for that:
“Whoever competes with Khamzat (Chimaev), they need to decide. If they do not come with a wrestling defense or a good Jiu-Jitsu attacking style like going after the legs, elevating Khamzat, they’re going to lose.”
Demetrious Johnson shared his thoughts on MMA fans and their opinions on grappling in a recent video uploaded to his official YouTube channel:
