Would you rather be bored or annoyed?
It’s kind of a reductive way of thinking about it, but you have to admit: It does fit in 140 characters.
These days, sometimes that’s all you need. And that’s probably why John Dodson doesn’t mind couching it in those terms, even though one of those rather unflattering descriptors is self-directed.
See, Dodson has had some time to think lately. Dodson has looked on as MMA‘s biggest talkers market themselves into main events, regardless of their size. Coming back from a major injury, Dodson has watched from the sidelines over the past year as Demetrious Johnson—the UFC flyweight champion, one of the two or three best fighters in the world and the only UFC flyweight to ever defeat Dodson—drove their division into the public-opinion ground.
Fear not. Or fear—that’s your call. But Dodson’s ready to take the wheel.
Prior to his fight with Zach Makovsky on Saturday at UFC 187, the not-personality-deficient Dodson is applying the full-court press to not only get a rematch for the belt but to become the new—and in his mind, improved—face of the 125-pound weight class.
“I’m the savior of the division because Demetrious Johnson is so boring,” Dodson said recently in an exclusive interview with Bleacher Report. “People want someone they love and they can cheer for. DJ is not that person. They say they like him. They say, ‘Oh, good job.’
“Then they interview him, and it’s boring…Some people hate me, they call me a cartoon character. But people want something amazing. I’m happy. I’m energetic. That’s me.”
Dodson is certainly comfortable in his own skin. Some people get agitated by what they see as his silly, over-the-top theatrics at weigh-ins and other venues, dating back to his 2011 stint as a contestant on The Ultimate Fighter. But Dodson (16-6) takes all that in stride because, well, the best MMA fighters in the world have that luxury.
A lightning-fast workout warrior with legitimate knockout power in his hands, Dodson is probably one of the most finely tuned competitors in the UFC right now. What’s more, if he can handle Makovsky on Saturday, he’ll be 5-1 as a UFC flyweight, with his only defeat coming to Johnson in an excellent bout back in 2013. That will all make it hard for UFC brass to turn down him down—again—for a title shot.
“I thought I was supposed to get a title shot right now,” Dodson said. “But they said I had to fight one more person.”
The reasoning there is fairly sound, when you think about it. This is Dodson’s first fight in nearly a year, thanks to a torn ACL suffered in his last fight, which Dodson still pulled out via a doctor stoppage TKO against John Moraga. The Jackson-Winkeljohn student spent nine months recovering and doing his best not to rush back.
“It hurt so bad. I knew immediately when it happened. I felt my knee pop,” Dodson recalled. “The only hard part [during rehab] was I didn’t want to leave the gym. Everybody would be like, ‘Why are you still in the gym?’ I live in the gym. I push myself harder than anyone else I know. My teammates just wanted me to sit down and relax and not get too crazy.”
It was apparently also pretty hard to watch the champion do his thing. The flyweight division, with Johnson at its vanguard, has drawn dismal television ratings and pay-per-view numbers. Most recently, the injury-riddled UFC 186 card, headlined by Johnson’s fifth-round submission defeat of Kyoji Horiguchi, struggled to break 100,000 pay-per-view buys.
That’s pitiful.
And that’s what Dodson wants to change. He acknowledged some people are just going to enjoy larger people fighting compared to smaller people. But he doesn’t let Johnson off the hook for what he views, in a sense, as a failure of responsibility when it comes to promoting fights.
“Some people just want the big guys, but flyweights aren’t lower class,” Dodson said. “We can be great. Everybody has seasons of champions. Smaller boxers used to be considered as midgets. Now, everyone watches Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao.”
His road to Johnson technically begins Saturday with an opponent Dodson knows fairly well. Dodson said he has trained with Makovsky frequently in the past.
“He’s going to have very strong wrestling,” Dodson said. “He’ll try to push forward. He’ll shoot, and I’ll try to bang it out, or I’ll try to take him down.”
That’s the fight, though. His push for the rematch began weeks ago and will never see the inside of a cage.
“I enjoy my job,” Dodson said. “I’m wild and crazy. They say I’m like a little kid…It’s just who I am.”
Scott Harris writes about MMA for Bleacher Report. For more stuff like this, find Scott on Twitter. All quotes obtained firsthand.
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