Issue 147
November 2016
Anthony Johnson’s unstoppable uppercut finishes Glover Texeira.
“We don’t need to do all that talking to get knockouts done. We just come out here and do the damn thing.” While Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz spent the weeks ahead of UFC 202 trading a landfill’s worth of trash talk, Anthony Johnson kept quiet and waited for his chance to strike. The man with the heaviest hands in the light heavyweight division – and possibly the whole of mixed martial arts – said he knew he would make his mark and collect his 13th Octagon knockout against Glover Texeira. He was not mistaken.
‘Rumble’ didn’t need to spend a lot of time before the event in Las Vegas watching tape with his Blackzilians coaches. He revealed he can get the drop on his opponents with minimal preparation.
“I don’t really study fights too much,” he said after his latest KO. “I can watch one or two rounds and I can tell what a person likes to do. I did that and I just knew if I hit him with an uppercut it would be lights out.
“Usually I hit you one time and you don’t get back up unless someone’s helping you up.”
KO clairvoyance
“I told my coach, Neil Melanson, ‘I’m going to knock him out with an uppercut. He’ll walk straight into it, I know he will.’ And that’s exactly what happened.” And even though he figured out his plan of attack, Johnson didn’t spend much time dwelling on a strategy during his fight camp. “We didn’t change anything,” he added. “Just reps. I always train the uppercut.”
Wait for it
“Glover’s a beast, he always comes forward, barely ever goes backward. I just had to be patient and wait. I knew eventually I was going to catch him.” So, the outcome wasn’t a surprise, and the time shouldn’t have been either. Johnson’s predilection for sub-60-second stoppages means he’s now the only man to have hit five knockouts inside a minute. But even he thought he took a little longer. He said: “I thought they said 30, but it’s 13? That’s what I did in my UFC debut – I knocked my guy out in 13 seconds. Maybe we got something going on right now.”
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