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“We’ll make it happen if I get low enough. We’ll fight at 205.”
Anthony Johnson has yet to return to the UFC, but there’s already a lot of buzz surrounding a potential heavyweight megafight with reigning UFC light heavyweight champ Jon Jones.
Johnson announced last week that he would be returning to the Octagon sometime in the new year and, although he’s expected to compete at heavyweight, the heavy hitting knockout artist said in a recent interview with Brendan Schaub that he would be willing to cut to 205 lbs. if need be.
“I’m gonna wait until I get about, when I lose about 10 more pounds, 235. I wanna see how my body feels and then if it feels good, then I’m going to probably make 205. Why? Because who is there to fight at 205?”Johnson posed as a rhetorical question (h/t Jed Meshew of MMA Fighting).
.@Anthony_Rumble is willing to make the cut to 205 lbs for @JonnyBones… pic.twitter.com/WQmKTwbTA4
— Below the Belt with Brendan Schaub (@btbshowtime) October 13, 2019
“We’ll make it happen if I get low enough,” Johnson said. “We’ll fight at 205. That’s a fight I wanted. I think Jon wanted that fight too, before everything happened. That situation, which, it’s over with, it’s in the past. When we see each other there’s no animosity between each other. We show each other love, you know what I mean? But that was a fight, that’s why I went up to 205, man.”
Johnson announced his retirement in 2017 after suffering a second title loss to then-light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier, and ‘Rumble’ admits he didn’t really have the motivation to rematch ‘DC’ in the first place.
“That’s the guy I want [Jones] and then you know, when I get my heart broken, I have to fight DC, it’s not as motivating,” Johnson said. “The fire wasn’t in me to fight DC but I fought him, kind of fought him, you know what I’m saying, but it wasn’t the same drive.”
Jones, the current light heavyweight champ, teased of a ‘big fight announcement’ last month but didn’t reveal an opponent. Perhaps the pound-for-pound No. 1 was hinting at a superfight with Johnson.