UFC bantamweight champion T.J. Dillashaw has been looking to lock down a super-fight against UFC flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson for some time now. That being said, an official announcement of the match up has yet to be made. Now Dillashaw has decided to voice his thoughts on the matter.
Speaking on the Submission Radio podcast, Dillashaw spoke about his original fight offer to Johnson from before “Mighty Mouse” shattered the UFC record for most consecutive title defenses.
“I want to prove that I could have stopped him from breaking the record when he turned down the fight and was scared to fight me. This is the one that everyone wants to talk about, everyone wants to see, and so it’s time for him to man up and take this fight.”
Speaking on Johnson turning down a fight with him in favor of a fight with flyweight contender Ray Borg for UFC 216, Dillashaw added:
“It showed that he was scared, man. It showed that he wanted the easier fight to break his record, it showed some weakness in him.”
“He was saying that I needed to make 125 or I needed to be a champion at 135, those are his excuses. So no, I got the belt back and he should have taken the fight anyways. I’m not going to have to take a fight at 125. No one’s got time for that. And if I’m not fighting you, I’d like to defend my belt. I’m not gonna go around, ain’t nobody got time for that stuff. (I don’t) got time for little games.”
“I’m the highest pound-for-pound fighter that Demetrious Johnson can fight. Neither of those guys are on the pound-for-pound list. Demetrious has already beaten Henry Cejudo. I’m definitely not skipping ahead of him, I already am ahead of him, and so I think I have the profile to fight Demetrious.”
“I would love to go down to 125 and make it though because he is known as the pound for pound champ. I want to beat him at his weight class. Because otherwise there’s gonna be these excuses that, oh, he had to go up to 135 to fight me, I didn’t beat the real pound for pound champ. I wanna go down and beat the pound for pound champion. He’s got that number one spot, I want to be there. And to do so I gotta beat him at his weight class to be pound for pound (number one). There’ll definitely be excuses if I beat him at 135 that he’s giving up all this weight. So I’m gonna take that equation out of it and drop the weight.”
