Dominant UFC flyweight champ Demetrious Johnson is willing to give Ray Borg another crack at the title after “The TazMexican Devil” pulled out of their scheduled UFC 215 fight last weekend due to illness.
He’s just not willing to wait that long.
‘Mighty Mouse was all set to break Anderson Silva’s record for consecutive title defenses with 11, a number he could have already reached had Borg been healthy enough to make it to the fight. But Johnson isn’t going to get up in arms about it, and he recently told ESPN (via Bloody Elbow) that while cancellations like this happen in the fight game, he wants to fight Borg at October 7’s UFC 216 from Las Vegas:
“He’s sick, it’s just a little flu. [UFC 216] is an option they gave me and I said, ‘Sounds fine.’ At the end of the day, [fight cancellations] happen all the time.
“I’ve [postponed] a fight before.”
If his bosses call him and state that UFC 216 won’t work, however, Johnson is ready to take the rest of the year off:
“Now, if they call me and say Oct. 7th is not going to work, you need to push it longer — I might just be done for the year. I’m not going to [extend] six or seven weeks. That’s when injuries happen. Things accumulate.”
The MMA world will have to await the UFC’s call, as it’s an uncertain one considering Borg’s long history of missing weight. He also pulled out of a bout with Ian McCall at 2016’s UFC 203 because of illness and has been confrontational with online critics of his withdrawal last week.
It’s a quick turnaround to make UFC 216 in the biggest fight of his life, and it’s questionable if Borg can continue to compete at 125 pounds consistently. If he cannot, he may have just squandered the biggest match-up of his UFC career.
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