Former undisputed flyweight champion, Demetrious Johnson has scoffed at the clinch game and work of incumbent bantamweight champion, Aljamain Sterling following a bizarre offer from the Uniondale native ahead of UFC 292 this weekend.
Johnson, the inaugural flyweight champion under the banner of the UFC, currently holds the undisputed flyweight equivalent under the scrutiny of the Chatri Sityodtong-led ONE Championship banner.
Yet to confirm plans on his potential retirement from mixed martial arts competition, Kentucky native, Johnson recently booked an outing in submission grappling, having remained sidelined since landing a trilogy rubber match win over Adriano Moraes in a flyweight title defense earlier this year.
And as for Sterling, the undisputed bantamweight champion is slated to headline UFC 292 this weekend in Boston, Massachusetts, taking on surging challenger, Sean O’Malley at the TD Garden in a fourth attempted successful title defense.
Demetrious Johnson scoffs at Aljamain Sterling’s ability
However, ahead of his return to ‘Bean Town’, Sterling made a leftfield proposition to Johnson, claiming he would be interested in fighting him if the former wanted to earn revenge for his prior win over common-foe, Henry Cejudo.
Breaking down a potential clash with the Serra-Longo MMA staple, Johnson claimed that in a clinch exchange, Sterling leaves a lot to be desired.
“I feel his (Aljamain Sterling) weakness is he has no clinch game,” Demetrious Johnson told MMA Fighting. “Like, I would eat his ass up for breakfast in the clinch game. I feel like rhythm-wise, I move way better than he does on the feet – grappling; he is longer, so I would never let him get my f*cking back, because he’ll lock them f*cking ‘Funkmaster’ legs in a body triangle like he did on Petr Yan, and they’ll have to survive him doing that.”
“The one thing he does that helps to my advantage is that he crosses a distance for me, right,” Demetrious Johnson explained. “He does this [jabs] and a funky-ass kick, and I’m like, ‘Perfect, come here, I wanna show you a thing called a Muay Thai clinch.’ I just feel like I’ll eat him alive in a clinch.”