Reigning UFC flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson secured his place in mixed martial arts history with his victory over Ray Borg at UFC 216. Johnson was once again able to thoroughly dominate his opponent and pull of an amazing submission in the fifth round.
Demetrious Johnson wanted to make a point this time around though. Not only was he looking to break Anderson Silva’s consecutive title defense record (10) but also wanted to prove a point to Borg.
“Ray Borg is tough. Very, very tough,” Johnson said on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour. “I hit him with some good shots, some good knees to the liver, a couple liver kicks, and I felt that he was always going to be tough, and that was the thing when I fought him. When you look at his previous fights, the thing he’s really good at that people don’t appreciate is, one – he’s very tough, two – he’s very good at the scrambles.”
D.J. said Borg reminded him of a previous opponent, and had to be a few steps ahead of his opponent the entire time.
“So it almost kinda reminds me of Tim Elliot. . . Tim Elliot will let you get his back. He’ll let you have his back, that way when you go down for the choke, he’ll scramble and end up on top. And then next thing you know, you’re on your back and you have to get off.
“So when I was with Ray Borg, I was like, ‘Dude, you’re letting me have this, that’s fine. I’m going to let you think I’m going to go for it, and then you when you try to scramble, I’m going to be ahead of you in the scramble, because you think you think you’re a better scrambler than I am, because I remember you saying that my scrambling ability is horrible.’
“It didn’t bother me (that Borg said he could out-scramble him), it’s just that I just wanted to prove a point.”
Even with so much riding on the line, Johnson was still very classy to Ray Borg after the fight. Take a look at some of the unseen footage captured after D.J.’s historic victory at UFC 216.
