Demetrious Johnson, one of the most dominant champions in the history of mixed martial arts, suffered a crushing defeat in front of Adriano Moraes on Wednesday in an important night for the promotion of the ONE Championship in Asia.
The ONE Championship event took place in Singapore and was broadcast live in the USA on TNT, marking the company’s first live TV on American television.
Johnson (30-3-1), widely regarded as one of the greatest fighters of all time, was an obvious title contender. As the UFC weightlifting champion, he set the record for the consecutive title defense, defending the belt 11 times in 2013-2018.
But it was Moraes (19-3) who took full advantage of the opportunity, eliminating Johnson with a bad knee kick 2 minutes, 24 seconds into the second round to keep his flyweight title. The knee was reportedly illegal under US MMA rules, as Johnson was in a good position when he was hit, but those strikes are allowed under the Asian ONE Championship banner.
“I have to go home and watch the fight, see when I was wrong,” said Johnson, 34, who had never been eliminated before Wednesday. “Adriano is very long, big. It was hard to try to get to him. It’s part of the game. You stay in this game long enough, this is going to happen at some point, right?”
Moraes, from Brazil, had been waiting for years for the opportunity to fight Johnson. Although the fight was for the flyweight title, it was actually fought at 135 pounds, as the weight classes of the ONE Championship are modified by those in the US to discourage extreme weight loss. Moraes first won a title in the ONE Championship in 2014. He lost his belt in 2015, before regaining the undisputed title in 2017.
Moraes’ height and advantage gave Johnson significant problems early on. Although there wasn’t much offense in the opening round, it was obvious that Johnson was having a hard time choralizing his opponent from a distance and struggled to match Moraes’ physicality from the ground. Moraes almost landed a knee in the second round, just moments before a top right kick left Johnson and then the final knee kick brought him out.
ONE Championship has several live events planned on TNT this month, although Wednesday’s card offered by far the best list in terms of name recognition in the US
Alvarez-Lapicus ends with a quick disqualification
In addition to the main flyweight event, the ONE Championship promoted an easy fight between former Bellator MMA champion and UFC champion Eddie Alvarez and Iuri Lapicus, the 2nd lightweight class of the promotion. The co-feature had an unfortunate end, in which Alvarez (30-8) was disqualified in the first round for blows to the back of the head.
Alvarez, from Pennsylvania, scored an early elimination and caught Lapicus’ legs under him along the fence. As Alvarez began to throw wide, straight hands from the top position, Lapicus turned his head toward the fence, exposing his back. Alvarez continued to throw until Lapicus reacted badly to one of them and fell back to the canvas.
The action was interrupted while the referee called an illegal shot and separated the fighters. Alvarez immediately challenged the legality of the blows, but later expressed only concern for Lapicus’ health.
“Yuri turned his head in the opposite direction, and the referee warned me:” Back! “Alvarez said. “If you see, I take my head and push my head towards the side where the fists come from. On top of that, I thought, as long as I hit my ear, I thought it was legal. Whatever the referee’s call makes is okay. that Yuri is completely fine. This game is so dangerous, all I care about is that everyone stays safe. “
If Alvarez had won the fight, he would have been one step closer to competing for the ONE lightweight championship. As such, he suffers his third defeat in four battles.