KSI is one of the biggest stars to emerge from the YouTube world and he recently decided to test his grappling skills against MMA legend Demetrious Johnson. He obviously has a significant size advantage over Johnson, who spent his career competing at flyweight and bantamweight. KSI on the other hand has competed in the cruiserweight division in his Boxing matches, putting him at somewhere around 65 to 75lbs heavier than Johnson. Size does have an impact and can often make up for a smaller technical advantage, but the difference in skill and grappling experience between KSI and Johnson Is absolutely massive.
Johnson is one of the greatest fighters in MMA history with lengthy reigns as both the UFC and ONE Championship flyweight world champion during his career. He’s also stayed incredibly active since retiring from the sport as well, focusing on Jiu-Jitsu and even winning the IBJJF Master World Championship at brown belt. There aren’t many people in the world who could compete with those accolades anyway, but KSI has exactly zero competitive experience in both Jiu-Jitsu and MMA. His only combat sports experience is a series of boxing matches, although interestingly one of them was going to be against BJJ black belt Dillon Danis.
KSI has had a little grappling training in the past though, but obviously nothing compared to the thousands of hours that Demetrious Johnson has spent on the mat. He actually had a training session with Michael Bisping a few years ago, but that went just about as well as this recent round with Johnson did. Because KSI was never really going to win the round, his goal was just to survive for a whole minute and Johnson even let him start in mount. It took just a second or two for Johnson to recover and sweep him though, before submitting him with an armbar from the top at the 17-second mark.
The full footage of KSI grappling with Demetrious Johnson was uploaded to the official X account of Championship Rounds:
