ONE Championship: Demetrious Johnson politely declines Rodtang’s offer for kick-boxing fight
- ‘Mighty Mouse’ admits he was ‘crazy’ to consider competing in a ONE kick-boxing bout following Adriano Moraes defeat
- ‘When you’re stuck in a Singapore hotel room for 10 days, you start to think all kinds of things,’ Johnson says
In the aftermath of Demetrious Johnson’s dramatic defeat by Adriano Moraes, the flyweight “GOAT” had a brief moment of madness.
“When you’re stuck in a hotel room in Singapore for 10 days, you start to think all kinds of crazy s***, right?” the 34-year-old American told SCMP MMA in a recent interview, before walking back the whole idea.
The problem for Johnson was his desire to try his hand at kick-boxing was politely taken up by ONE’s flyweight Muay Thai champion, Rodtang Jitmuangnon.
“I would gladly accept [the match],” Rodtang said this month. “But it’s up to ONE’s discretion. Personally, I want to face great fighters because it will be a life experience for a fighter like me.”
Luckily, Johnson knows how crazy he would be to even consider such a proposal.
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“You see that guy get hit?” Johnson said, laughing. “It would be like … ‘you did a good job, that was a good sparring match, all right I’m gonna go find a real Muay Thai guy. Bye bye’.
“When you look at how many fights those guys have … I mean, I saw a gentleman who’s fighting this weekend and he has 114 fights and I’m like, ‘Oh my god, that’s totally [expletive] up, that’s so many bouts.
“When it comes to kick-boxing and Muay Thai, I mean the striking, those guys are just absolutely on a different level.”
Johnson confirmed he will instead return to mixed martial arts, likely later this year, when he steps back into the ONE Circle and looks to work his way back up to another flyweight title shot.
“Kick-boxing was one of the things I would love to try to do before maybe I’m done fighting in my combat career. But obviously it’s gonna be mixed martial arts,” he said.
“When I got back home and I sat down I’m like, ‘Why would I put myself in one realm when I can wrestle, knee, grapple?
“Because that’s the biggest thing I love about mixed martial arts, it’s combining all the martial arts forms instead of being stuck in one thing where if a guy’s a better kick-boxer than you, you’re gonna have a hard, hard time getting that W, or getting that point.
“But in a mixed martial arts fight, if a guy’s a better kick-boxeror if he’s a better grappler, you can negate that aspect of that martial arts form to put him at a disadvantage or keep yourself at an advantage.
“It’s just something I’d love to do absolutely for fun. Do I care about going out there and trying to win a world title in kick-boxing? No, I have no interest in being a world champion in kick-boxing.”
