Another Demetrious Johnson fight, another promising contender in the flyweight division turned away. Mighty Mouse used the co-main event at UFC 197 on Saturday to defend his UFC flyweight title against Henry Cejudo via first-round TKO.
MMA Fighting tweeted out the time of the stoppage:
In a lot of ways Cejudo was viewed as one of the most dangerous opponents for Johnson at flyweight. His power and background as an Olympic background provided some intrigue. For a brief moment in Round 1, it looked like the champ may be put in some bad situations when Cejudo scored an early takedown.
Mighty Mouse was able to kick off the challenger and get the fight back to the feet. From there, he looked to take advantage in the clinch, where vicious knees proved to be the undoing for the latest man to try to defeat the champion.
Patrick Wyman of Bleacher Report put the impressive performance in perspective:
The victory over Cejudo marked Mighty Mouse’s eighth consecutive successful title defense. That’s an important number when you consider the record for consecutive title defenses sits at 10. His eight ties him with Jon Jones and leaves him two shy of tying Anderson Silva for most all-time.
Johnson recently shared his thoughts on potentially breaking the record with the UFC:
The problem is whether the UFC can find someone in the division who presents an interesting challenge. As great as Johnson is, he isn’t necessarily a main attraction, and his dominance might not help change that.
Mighty Mouse now has wins over five of the top six in his division, according to the UFC rankings heading into this bout. The sixth is Jussier Formiga, who dropped a split decision to Cejudo in November.
At this point the UFC might be left with no other option than to start cycling back through previous challengers. He already beat John Dodson in a rematch. The 29-year-old believes it might be time to give former rival Joseph Benavidez a third shot against the champion, per Dave Doyle of MMA Fighting:
“The man’s won four or five in a row,” Johnson said. “He’s finished guys, he’s fought the best of those guys. I’m not taking anything away from Henry Cejudo. Do you guys want to sell pay-per-views? Then we need to find the most famous fighters in the flyweight division and it’s going to be Joseph Benavidez. After that it’s John Dodson and after that it’s Ian McCall, and he hasn’t been active at all. After that, I don’t know who.”
This isn’t the end of the line by any means for Cejudo. The former Olympic gold medalist has shown his worth as a Top Five flyweight already. With Johnson holding a win over everyone else in the division, this loss really shouldn’t put Cejudo back too far.
Instead, this win was yet another example of how dominant Johnson is. Whether you like his style or not, few fighters in the history of the UFC have owned their division like he has.
Now, he finds himself just a few more title defenses away from having empirical evidence that he belongs among the best of all time.
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