Anthony Johnson — Looking to Land Something Big

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By Chuck Mindenhall

If you’ve seen Anthony Johnson fight you know three things to be true: A) he’s a big 170, B) he’s got a never die attitude (fashioned after Wanderlei Silva and Walter Payton) and C) if you get in the way of one of his bombs, you’ll need smelling salts and a soothing voice to come back.

Just ask Chad Reiner, who lasted only 13 seconds against those fists o’ fury in Johnson’s memorable UFC debut in June of last year; or Tommy Speer, who was left crumpled in a daze after 51 seconds of blitzing, sniping and other violations in Colorado earlier this year. Even Rich Clementi, who narrowly avoided a similar fate by clinging to Johnson for dear life with his eyes blinking like hazard lights in the first round of their bout at UFC 76, would probably swear that there are anvils in those five-ounce gloves.

So, for a guy with an accomplished wrestling pedigree, where’d he learn to strike like that?

“I joined Chute Boxe in Los Angeles,” says the former All-American from the esteemed Lassen Community College in Susanville, California, where Quinton Jackson also attended. “What happened was—I was getting hit. I’ve always been athletic and I was getting hit and I was like, ‘I’m tired of getting punched in the face.’”

So he started punching back, “swinging for the fences” as he calls it, and the rest is a halo of stars for whoever gets in the Octagon with him.

Johnson (5-1) will take on BJJ submission artist Kevin Burns (7-1) at UFC Fight Night in Las Vegas on July 19 (Spike TV 9pm ET / 6pm PT), and if he has his druthers, he’ll stand and bang with the Iowan and let the chips fall where they may. But the 24-year-old Johnson isn’t naïve. He anticipates just the opposite from the Tae Kwon Do black belt, Burns.

“I saw his fight with Roan Carneiro [at UFC 85], his little highlight he had (choke). I know he’s going to try and take me down—I know it. He’ll try once, and if that doesn’t work, if he figures out that he can’t take me down and tries to strike with me, he might catch me one or two times. That’s part of the game—you’re supposed to get hit. Nobody’s perfect. I can dodge and block every punch that he throws at me, but I’m going to get mine too. And I’m pretty sure that mine are going to hurt more than his. I’ll send him a message on that first punch.”

That homing pigeon of a first punch will be more than a feeler, it’s sure to pack Johnson’s entire expulsion of force behind it. Johnson burns his candle at both ends; he does not fight tentatively—it’s not in his nature. From the very start he is looking to finish. In fact, Johnson, who grew up under his grandparents’ wing in the small town of Dublin, Georgia, would rather lose spectacularly after expending every ounce of energy in his body than to win a tactical battle by out-pointing his opponent.

This was best exemplified in his loss to Rich Clementi, where Johnson knew he wasn’t physically prepared for 15 minutes of battle after dropping 33 pounds in a week on a short notice fight.

“They called me and asked me how much I weighed and I lied. I was like, ‘190,’ but was really at 203. In that fight with Clementi, I lost. Props to Rich. But at the end people were still clapping for me, everybody saw that I did my best. I just want to be that guy who goes out there and gives it his all and everybody remembers me for never saying no, who always laid it on the line, and for just keeping going in the cage and out of the cage.”

In that particular fight, Johnson gassed out after the veteran Clementi curbed the tempo in his favor before eventually sinking a rear naked choke. “Every time I had a punch, I tried to knock him out with it,” Johnson says. “I knew I couldn’t go fifteen minutes with that man.”

Scary part is, that deficiency of Johnson’s—his cardio—he now considers his strength. He says he can now go “four rounds easy,” with a proper training regiment with Cung Le and the USH Team in San Jose—a stark contrast to the one-week notice he was given for the Reiner fight to step in for an injured Steve Bruno.

The one-time high school running back and bouncer is confident, not just in his upcoming fight with Burns, but for the big picture. In fact, get him going on the subject of who he’d like to fight and what he’d like to accomplish in the sport, he will positively beam. When that happens, you’d best be ready for a laundry list of improbable goals, which sounds all too probable coming from such an enthusiastic young fighter.

Johnson says he’d love to be one of the most prolific fighters of all time, and to not only knock Georges St-Pierre off the top of the hill at 170 but “to go after 185 and beat everybody up at there, and, if Dana [White] ever allows it to happen, I’ll be the first to hold two different belts at the same time.”

Is that it? “No. BJ Penn, Minotauro—everybody. If I could drop down to 135/140, I’d do that, too. There’s so much competition out there, I would love to test everybody just to see who’s the better man. Test our bodies and spirits.”

He also says he has a good 20 years left in him, health permitting, to take over the entire world of MMA. “I’m trying to be like Randy Couture one day, better than Randy Couture . . . I want to be able to be 45 years old and kicking people’s asses up and down the cage. Hopefully I’m at that caliber of a fighter by the time I get that age and have the respect of people and the respect of the sport.”

For the short term it’s Burns, though, and for him Johnson will be Johnson. In other words, he’d love to tuck Burns in early.

“I always intend to go into a fight and finish it. But I can’t say how I’m going to finish it. If I just happen to catch them with something big and they’re in the way of my fists, that’s their fault. They should have moved.”

Make that four things that are true.

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