Johnson attributes career turnaround to cutting less weight, not more
Anthony Johnson went from 2-2 at welterweight and middleweight to 8-0 at lightheavy weight and heavyweight; he said the improvement was from cutting so little.
Weigh cutting is an integral part of mixed martial arts, but the curious case of Anthony Johnson offers pause for thought. He was by every account the largest welterweight in the sport’s history.
“Rumble” weighed in at 170 vs. Josh Koscheck at UFC 106, and lost. He won the next two, before moving up to middleweight where he missed weight and lost, vs. Vitor Belfort, and was fired.
Then he moved up to a more natural fighting weight of 205, even making a foray up to heavyweight, and has gone 8-0.
Johnson fights Alexander Gustafsson at UFC on Fox 14 on January 24, 2015 in Stockholm, Sweden. A win there will earn him a title shot, at 205.
So how did he go from 2-2 to 8-0 with a possible title shot?
“I can eat,” he said, laughing, as transcribed by Elias Cepeda for FOX Sports. “I can enjoy myself.”
“I’m just having fun. That’s all that matters to me, right now. Big difference. Big difference, when you can eat.”
Every fight, I feel that I get better, and better.
Still, Gustafsson is a tough for fight for any light heavyweight on Earth. It is tough even to get someone to mimic his style.
“It’s hard to find someone who can move like him,” acknowledged Johnson.
“He’s got a unique style that you don’t see often in MMA. I think the closest guy I’ve ever seen move like him, like Alexander, is Dominick Cruz. They move a lot, those two guys. They are basically mimics of each other.
“So, I don’t know, man. I’ve got to do some things. But we’ll see. We’ll see. It all only matters what happens January 24 …We’ll see then, if I did my homework.”
“You can only be as good as your last performance so hopefully I’m ten times better than I was when I fought Phil, and Nogueira. So, hopefully January 24 I’m like Superman. But, we’ll see. When you’re fighting a guy like Gustafsson, you just never know what’s going to happen. When you’re fighting a guy like me, you just never know what’s going to happen.”
Long, long ago, 170 pound Pat Miletich fought former UFC heavyweight champion Dan Severn. Before the fight Miletich was asked how the fight was going to go.
“I don’t know,” answered Miletich honestly. “That’s why you have the fight.”
Miletich and Johnson are right – you don’t know what is going to happen in a fight, which why you have it. But one thing that is a little less clear is whether extreme weight cutting is actually counter productive. For Johnson, it apparently was.