Johnson: McGregor reminds me of a young Ali or Tyson

UFC 178 will feature appearances by two remarkably different personalities. Demetrious Johnson, who fights Chris Cariaso in the main event, is a relentlessly technical beast in the cage, and a complete gentleman outside of it. Conor McGregor by contrast is a relentless trash talker outside the cage.

However, Johnson is far from immune to the interest that McGregor generates, and in a recent appearance on The MMA Hour, said that the story line for Saturday that most interests him is seeing whether McGregor can back it up.

“I really, truly appreciate Conor McGregor’s style — his fighting style and the way he talks,” said Johnson as transcribed by Shaun Al-Shatti for MMAFighting. “The reason why is because he reminds me of a young Mike Tyson, a young Muhammad Ali, the way he talks.

“Like, I look at him and I don’t see him talking trash. I look at him and I see him talking (about) what he sees, where he’s like: ‘dude, I’m way faster, I move way better than you do, you’re slow, I’m going to hit you hard’ — which, I believe all these things that he says are true. Like, I believe that his fighting style is good, he understands fighting, and not taking anything away from Dustin Poirier — Dustin Poirier is a huge test — I can appreciate somebody who can talk that stuff and he’ll go in there and he’ll back it up.”

“The curious thing will be like, what if he loses? They have so much hype behind Conor McGregor. If he loses then, you know, they’ll look around like, ‘Well, we had a good run, Conor. Let’s see what you got to say again.’

“So I’m more intrigued by that fight because I think that fight has more stakes going into it, because it’s like, one, I’m pretty sure if Conor wins it, then he can be fighting ‘old man Swanson,’ as he called him, Cub Swanson next. And then, who knows, he could be fighting Chad Mendes or Jose Aldo for the title after those two fight. We’ll see.”