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“You’re talking about it right now. There you go, you just answered it yourself.”
Former UFC flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson and current flyweight and bantamweight champ Henry Cejudo are worlds apart in promotional strategy.
Johnson, who was formerly ranked No. 1 on the UFC’s official pound-for-pound list, is a soft-spoken champ who usually lets his fists do the talking, whereas Cejudo, 32, has adopted an entirely new strategy to promote his fights — and it’s working.
Cejudo, who now refers to himself as ‘Triple C’, has been named ‘the king of cringe’ by many MMA fans but Johnson understands exactly what ‘The Messenger’ is doing.
“He’s doing exactly what you want him to do,” Johnson told MMA Fighting’s Alexander K. Lee in a recent interview. “You’re talking about it right now. There you go, you just answered it yourself.”
Cejudo recently called out female UFC champions Amanda Nunes, Valentina Shevchenko and Weili Zhang, telling each woman to ‘bend the knee to Triple C’ and, while it is a bizarre promotional strategy, ‘Mighty Mouse’ says it works insofar as keeping Cejudo’s name in the headline.
“That’s how I see it. You brought it up, I don’t even think about it,” Johnson said. “You probably think about it more than I do.”
Johnson lost his UFC flyweight title to Cejudo back in 2018 but, when asked bout a possible rematch with the Olympian, the 33-year-old said he is more concerned with winning ONE Championship’s flyweight grand prix and becoming a multi-promotion champ.
“Losses happen. When people try to bring up the past and like, ‘It would be so cool to fight this guy.’ For me, I truly don’t care, I just want to keep on fighting, get through this tournament, win and then get a shot at the ONE Championship belt against Adriano and then win that and then see what’s next.”
Johnson is scheduled to take on Danny Kingad at ONE’s Century event in Tokyo, Japan on October. 12.