Demetrious Johnson knows Rodtang Jitmuangnon will certainly present some very unique tests in their upcoming mixed rules matchup at Saturday’s ONE X in Singapore, and he’s not expecting anything to come easy.
Rounds 1 and 3 of the contest will be contested under muay Thai rules with four-ounce gloves, and Johnson (30-4-1) knows he’ll have to be wary when standing in against the vaunted striker, who boasts more than 300 contests to his name.
“I’m going to go out to do my best,” Johnson said. “Obviously, Rodtang, that’s his world. He’s got a chin of granite. He’s been hit by the best athletes in the world. Jon Haggerty kicked him flush in the neck. ‘Mini T’ (Danial Williams) clipped him with a left and a right, so the guy’s got a chin.”
Rounds 2 and 4 of the bout then turn to MMA rules, which certainly favors the former UFC flyweight champion. But “Mighty Mouse” is quick to remind everyone that those rounds also start out on the feet, meaning Jitmuangnon is still going to be dangerous.
Additionally, the rounds are just three minutes long.
“I mean, the biggest thing is that it’s a three-minute round,” Johnson said. “So with it being a three-minute round, the fight starts on the feet, and in mixed martial arts you can use footwork, you can use distance. You really don’t have to engage in mixed martial arts. So let’s say, you know, the second round runs deep. I get him down, then I have two minutes to pass guard, and so I don’t think it’d be a fish on the ground. He comes from a great camp, Fairtex. They’ve done a great job with Stamp Fairtex, and he’s been training since November or September now.”
Of course, Johnson doesn’t think he needs to be focused on simply surviving in the striking rounds, either. In fact, Johnson thinks his typical approach might prove quite successful.
“A lot of people, when you look at Rodtang’s fights – when he fought ‘Mini T,’ when he fought Walter Goncalves, when he fought Jon Haggerty – those guys, they don’t have that constant forward pressure,” Johnson said. “They didn’t meet Rodtang with forward pressure. They use a lot of angles, movements in their muay Thai bout against Rodtang. It just sort of happens that my movement is also angles and use of footwork, right? … If you look at all my fights, I’ve always used angles and footwork in all my combat and in all my fights, so why would I change?”
Truthfully, both men will be very much out of their comfort zones in the rounds that aren’t contested in their favored disciplines, which is what makes the fight so intriguing. But Johnson doesn’t believe the fight is about surviving the first round and then easily finishing Jitmuangnon once they shift to MMA. He’s expecting something far more challenging.
“If I was only training just to get to the second round and finish him, then I would only be training for six minutes a day, right?” Johnson asked. “But when we’re training for this fight, we’ve been doing 13 rounds. After 13 rounds we’d do about three rounds of straight muay Thai, then we do three rounds, jiu-jitsu, grappling. I mean, that’s just what training camp has been like a mixed martial arts fight, so for me, I don’t have that mindset.
“I never had that mindset in any of my fights, even my amateur career, that it’s going to be a quick night. We get in there, we’re going to fight and if we get him out in the second round we get him out in the second round. If we get them out there to fourth, so be it. But for me, I always planned for a long night.”
