...OH, ONE MORE THING - PLEASE BOOKMARK US & VISIT DAILY!
By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
Though Anthony "Rumble" Johnson is more than likely getting a no. 1 contender fight with Alexander Gustafsson at the outset of 2015, another matchup is on his mind as well.
In an interview with Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour, Johnson talked about his current verbal feud with former teammate Alistair Overeem, and said he's open to a catchweight fight in the future.
"I'll fight him, I don't care. I've already trained with him before," Johnson said. "Why not? To me it's just a fight. If the fans want to see it, I'm down to do it. I ain't said no to any fight ever. I'd meet him at a catchweight. If he wanted to meet me at 225, let's do it. Or whatever, 220, I'd do that. Or I'd meet at 230 at the dot, if he was down to go that far. Let's do it. Even if I fought him, it's a dangerous fight. He's still got weapons that are crazy. He was hitting Ben with some crazy knees. He's a dangerous fighter still, but I'd definitely test him."
"He's still one of the top heavyweights in the world, in my opinion. I don't think they're going to get rid of him. I mean, he's still going to sell tickets. People want to see him either win or lose, you know what I'm saying? It's not like when Anderson [Silva] was fighting or GSP was fighting, when Chuck [Liddell] was fighting. They wanted to see those guys dominate somebody. With him, they almost want to see him get beat up now, because of things he's done or things he's said, or whatever. [He] got caught up with some stuff that just changed people's view of him."
Penick's Analysis: Johnson's been a bit of divisional nomad in this sport, so him taking a fight with Overeem wouldn't be all that crazy an idea. Hell, he fought and beat Andrei Arlovski just last year. But he's got the light heavyweight field to concentrate on now, and a win over Gustafsson will get him into a title fight. He needs to concentrate on that before thinking ahead to a fight with Overeem.
DON'T GO YET... WE SUGGEST THESE MMATORCH ARTICLES, TOO!
Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
STAFF COLUMNISTS: Shawn Ennis - Jason Amadi
Frank Hyden - Rich Hansen
Chris Park - Matt Pelkey
Interested in joining MMATorch's writing team? Send idea for a theme to your column (for Specialist section) or area of interest (i.e. TV Reporter) along with a sample of writing to mmatorch@gmail.com.
