While one former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) champion’s debut for ONE Championship didn’t go as planned, another one made the most of his first-ever opportunity to shine for his new company.
Former UFC Flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson submitted Yuya Wakamatsu in their Flyweight Grand Prix opening round fight earlier today (Sun., March 31, 2019) at the ONE Championship “New Era” event in Tokyo, Japan. Yuya hung tough for the first few minutes, but after “Mighty Mouse” found his groove, he was was able to find the opening to sink in a fight-ending guillotine choke after landing some knees to head of his opponent.
”I love the knees to the grounded opponent,” Johnson said in his post-fight speech via MMA Fighting. “I just kept on reaching and I got a real nice guillotine. He went for the shot, I put my hips in and he was hanging on to my leg and I gave it more of a torque to get that finish. I don’t know if he went out or not because he tapped and then he woke up and was like ‘what happened, what happened?’ Can’t wait for the next round.”
With another vintage performance in the books, Johnson gets back into the win column after losing his UFC 125 pound title to Henry Cejudo last year, and moves on to the next round of the Grand Prix tournament.
Johnson was traded to ONE in a blockbuster move pulled off by UFC and the Asia-based promotion in 2018 for Ben Askren, who also made good in his debut for his new promotion earlier this year.
To get all full play-by-play updates and results from ONE Championship “New Era” click here.