While there is no question that Demetrious Johnson was a phenomenal fighter–his flying armbar finish of Ray Borg is one of the greatest moments in MMA history–there are a few things working against him when it comes to being in the pound-for-pound GOAT conversation.
1). Johnson fought the majority of his career in the flyweight division which was, by far, the weakest MMA weight class while he was active. The competition was so watered down during Johnson’s run in the UFC that the company planned to eliminate it until the Brandon Moreno-Deiveson Figueiredo quadrilogy saved it. In fact, the UFC took the unprecedented step of trading Johnson to another organization because of how weak the division was.
2). Johnson spent the last four years of his career fighting in ONE where he didn’t face a single fighter with even one fight in the UFC.
3). Johnson never faced Moreno, Figueiredo, or Alexandre Pantoja, who were the best flyweights during Johnson’s career aside from Henry Cejudo.
4). Not only did Johnson not face Pantoja, Moreno, and Figueiredo, he didn’t beat a single fighter who has a victory over them, which not underscores how relatively weak Johnson’s fight schedule was, but also how weak the resumes of the fighter’s Johnson defeated were.
5). Johnson lost to the two biggest names that he fought: Dominick Cruz and Henry Cejudo.
6). Johnson started off as a bantamweight and moved to the easier flyweight division after getting outclassed by Cruz. Had he stayed in the bantamweight division, he would’ve had a number of marquee opponents like Cruz (again), Aljamain Sterling, Merab Dvalishvili, Petr Yan, TJ Dillashaw, Sean O’Malley, and Jose Aldo. Johnson not only missed out on facing the murderer’s row at bantamweight, but having also not faced Moreno, Figueiredo, and Pantoja at flyweight means that he didn’t face the top competition in either division.
7). As of the September 10, 2024 rankings, Johnson had zero wins over the top 15 ranked UFC flyweights and 0 wins over the top 35 ranked flyweights in ANY company according to Tapology’s flyweight rankings.
8). Johnson’s knockout loss to Adriano Moraes and draw against Ian McCall are results that other fighters in the GOAT conversation simply don’t have.
Mighty Mouse gets a lot of love–and he deserves a lot of love–but it’s hard to overlook the fact that he lost to the two best opponents he faced, faced a schedule absent of many of the best fighters in the world, and fought in the weakest division in MMA. It would be disrespectful to the heavier weight classes to ignore the huge drop-off in the competition level at flyweight. The elite fighters from those divisions faced a gauntlet that Johnson never did. Even still, I have him rated well ahead of Moreno, Figueiredo, and Pantoja, and slightly ahead of Cejudo. It’s not unreasonable to call him the flyweight GOAT, but how would he have fared against the true killers of the flyweight division? We’ll never know.