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Things did not go as planned when two former UFC champions made their One Championship debut on Sunday in Tokyo.
Demetrious Johnson, holder of the long-time featherweight belt, won the second run in a strangely competitive fight. Eddie Alvarez, former world lightweight champion, UFC and Bellator, was eliminated in the first round.
Alvarez (29-7, 1 NC) was shocked by Timofey Nastyukhin (13-4), a stern Russian hand who participated in "The Underground King" from the start. Alvarez never took a beat and was beaten several times, offering little in return. After being knocked out by a left-right combination at the end of the inning, he leaned against the cage and covered himself. Nastyukhin unleashed a series of punches to finish the job at 4 minutes and 5 seconds.
"It's my style," said Nastyukhin, who competed in the eight-player Lightweight Grand Prix of the Asian promotion. "I like to finish the first round fights by knockout, so I did it."
The result was a telling tale for Johnson, who was next to launch the Flyweight Grand Prix. "Mighty Mouse" (28-3-1), who led the UFC's 125-pound division for six years before being dethroned by Henry Cejudo in August, acted patiently against the punch Yuya Wakamatsu (10-4), a 24-year-old player. old man from Tokyo who has nine KOs out of 10 wins, including five in the first round. He had the hometown crowd chanting "Yuya! Yuya!" after landing a crisp right hand late in the first round, sending Johnson back to his corner.
"He's good for distance traveled and the type of game he's playing, he wants you to cross the distance so he's hitting you with his right hand and left hook," Johnson said in a postfight interview inside the cage, after addressing the crowd with some of the Japanese words that he learned. "So for me, I struggled to cross the distance cautiously, I got caught here" – showing her bruised cheek – "but sometimes you face difficulties in the cage or in life. just to get through it. "
Johnson brought adversity to his opponent in the second round. The 32-year-old from Kirkland, Washington, took part in his wrestling match. Half a minute later, Johnson countered an aggressive advance of Wakamatsu by taking him to the canvas. From there, Johnson swarmed with his characteristic lightning speed, ranging from transition to struggle in transition. While dropping his elbows and knees to the head – the latter would have been illegal in a UFC fight – Johnson has continually sought a bid. And just as Wakamatsu was struggling to escape, Johnson sank into a guillotine.
"I have a real guillotine," Johnson said. "He went for the [takedown] I pulled my hips and he hung on my legs, which gave me even more torque to finish. I do not know whether he came out or not … but when he woke up, he said: "What is it? has passed? What happened? "
What happened was that Wakamatsu tapped out and the referee jumped at 2:40 of turn 2.
A referee had also participated in the fight that preceded this one – to rescue Alvarez, 35, who won only one victory in five fights. A skid that began when Conor McGregor took away the 155-pound UFC belt in 2016. Still, it was shocking to see Alvarez fall like that while he was fighting in Tokyo for a few hours to hardly after the UFC staged an event in his hometown, Philadelphia.
Combining the glittering possibilities of bringing in a pair of great UFCs, it was clearly an event centered on Asia. Rather than placing Johnson and Alvarez atop the marquee for an event called "A New Era", One Championship hid them in four fights for the title. Straw weight Jingnan Xiong (fifth-round TKO of Atomic Champion Angela Lee) and middleweight Aung La Nsang (Ken Hasegawa's second-round TKO) successfully defended their belts, while welterweight Eduard Folayang lost his title on the Japanese Legend Shinya Aoki via The Liveweight Kevin Belingon was disqualified in the third round against Bibiano Fernandes for hitting the head on the back of the head and returned the strap to the man to whom he it was removed in November.
But it was an evening that belongs to Johnson, at least for North American fans who listened to the old book at pound no. 1 earlier. He joined One Championship in October as part of an exchange primarily with UFC; In exchange for allowing him to sign with the Singapore-based promotion, UFC was allowed to hire former welterweight champion Ben Askren, who had retired without defeat.
Now, "Mighty Mouse", whose 11 title defenses are a UFC record, is looking for glory in the One tournament.
"I can not wait for the next round," he said.
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