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Demetrious Johnson is a fireball of a human being spit from the very maw of hell, a toy locomotive doused in piss and vinegar, a champion so in tune to the rhythm of the fight game that his body reacts in full orchestration with his brain, like a school of fish shifting into silver knives all at once. It’s as easy for me to say something like that as it is for him to do.
See, that’s the dumb thing. Johnson makes it look easy.
During the high-water mark of his career, Benson Henderson wanted to not only break all of Anderson Silva’s records, but to pry open our minds in the process and rearrange the order of GOATs. Henderson got down that block a good little ways, too. He defended the lightweight belt three times before losing it to Anthony Pettis at UFC 164. Pettis, who found himself on a Wheaties box holding that belt, defended it once before losing it to Rafael dos Anjos. Dos Anjos defended it once against Donald Cerrone before relinquishing it to Eddie Alvarez. Alvarez was no match for Conor McGregor, who turned Eddie into puff of magician smoke at Madison Square Garden.
All of this happened since Johnson last lost a bout. McGregor was getting set to fight Steve O’Keefe in Kentish Town and Ronda Rousey was still a year-and-a-half from debuting in the UFC when Johnson lost to Dominick Cruz as a bantamweight. That’s a long freaking time. Yet Johnson just keeps waxing fools, one after the next, cleaning out the cupboards like a man on a six-year binge.
Now it’s him on the verge of breaking Silva’s records — the guy everybody thought Miguel Torres beat back in the day. “Mighty Mouse” heads to Kansas City for his title defense with Wilson Reis with ninja stealth. Should he beat Reis at UFC on FOX 24 on Saturday night — and it’s tempting to think it a foregone conclusion that he will — he will tie Silva’s mark of 10 straight title defenses.
Johnson has made his run at history look incredibly easy. It would feel like sleight of hand if we didn’t have first person accounts from his various victims that it’s all very real.
Read Full Article HERE: With ‘Mighty Mouse,’ objects in the rear view mirror begin to feel larger
