I have nothing witty to say here – I’m just still not over the fact that the bulkiest guy in this picture once thought he was a welterweight.
Only one month removed from his official light-heavyweight debut, Anthony Johnson returned to action in the main event of last night’s Xtreme Fight Night 9 against fellow UFC washout Jake Rosholt. It’s always a risky move to book more than one fight at a time, but in Johnson’s case, the abundant optimism wasn’t without its merits, as he shut out Rosholt’s lights with a head kick in the second round. Before you inevitably ask, no, Rumble did not miss weight, either.
The fight was reasonably close in the first round, but after an accidental eye-poke from Rosholt, Johnson went straight into beast mode. Jake Rosholt had no answers for Anthony Johnson’s aggressive striking, and was such a bloody mess by the end of the fight that the referee almost called the bout before the head kick. Perhaps the most interesting part of this fight was the fact that Johnson was able to take the three-time NCAA Division One Champion down; not exactly an easy task.
After watching Anthony Johnson pick up such impressive victories since being cut from the UFC, one can’t help but wonder what could have been if Anthony Johnson was more careful with his body throughout his career. In some parallel universe, Rumble starts off as a light-heavyweight, doesn’t balloon up between fights and is possibly fighting Jon Jones tonight instead of Vitor Belfort. Instead, Anthony Johnson is a cautionary tale, a textbook example of weight cutting gone wrong and the living, breathing argument for banning the entire practice. It’s sad that his career may have been destroyed by misguided attempts to compete in a weight class that he had no business trying to make. The fat jokes made at this guy’s expense are sad, too, but does anyone really want to read an amateur sociologist’s take on body dysmorphic disorder and bigorexia in the MMA community? Didn’t think so.
If you want to watch a video of the fight, you can find a few of them here. Hurry up before they get taken down.