UFC flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson finds himself in a position someone of his skill and proven ability should simply never find themselves in.
Despite absolutely dominating everything put in front of him, and being one win away from the UFC record number of title defenses, he finds himself in a war of words with UFC president Dana White and facing the possibility of having his division scrapped from the organisation entirely... If he doesn't accept the fight that is being forced on him.
He is essentially being held to ransom by Dana White, who in his desperation mode to find a fight for TJ Dillashaw after Cody Carbrandt was forced to pull out of their scheduled bout, and the lack of respect being shown is alarming.
The flyweight division is not the most exciting, especially considering there are no genuine threats to Johnson's throne, which is in part his fault for being so dominant. That's a ridiculous thought to have about a champion.
However, as Mighty Mouse himself pointed out, the UFC has never pushed him in terms of promotion, and now after asking him to take a fight with Ray Borg, they are demanding that he fight TJ Dillashaw despite him never competing in the division and not being a champion that would make it a champ vs champ superfight. The suggested Johnson vs Garbrandt superfight would have made sense, but TJ, as exciting as it would be, does not.
After Dana White attempted to play it off as Johnson "ducking" TJ, he responded angrily and pointed out the threats that were being made against him, but what makes it so much worse is how incredibly good Mighty Mouse has been for the UFC.
Ariel Helwani summed up why this lack of respect is so insulting on the latest episode of The MMA Beat:
When you talk to him off the record, person to person, he is a lot different, than the guy who is talking in interviews and what I mean by that is, he has complained about certain things and I asked him: 'Why don't you say this? Why don't you bring this up?' and he is 'I'm not that kind of guy, I'm not that kind of champion', he's always been the quintessential company man and so for him to get to this point think about just how upset he must be to get to this point to actually unload this kind of statement with these kind of words.
Let me ask you this, about the actual meat and potatoes of this, because I kinda feel like a lot of people in MMA media, fans, have been sorta missing his point.
We are sitting here debating should he fight TJ Dillashaw? Should he fight Ray Borg? What should he do for his record breaking win? Should he be getting more money? I feel like at the end of the day all he is really talking about is respect.
I feel like if the UFC would've come to him with this idea at the very beginning and said, 'look, this is what we wanna do, we wanna do in Seattle, we wanna make it a big deal', I actually feel he would be open to it.
It's incredible how he is being treated.
This is the best pound for pound fighter in MMA we're talking about, and he's being strong-armed into agreeing to a fight that makes little sense for him, and offers no guarantee that it will even happen as Dillashaw may not be able for the weight cut.
But when you factor in how much Johnson has done for the UFC, and how much grief he has put up with, it does not reflect well on Dana White or the UFC at all.
It's not about fighting TJ Dillashaw, it's about respect, or the total lack thereof. Granted he has never pulled in big PPV numbers, but he has still done everything asked of him inside and outside of the octagon.
You can watch The MMA Beat in full below.
