Demetrious Johnson: "MMA is ‘the easiest sport to become champion in."

It's all about the number of competitors. That's why soccer is the hardest sport to reach the top. They have to compete against zillions of other soccer players.
 
He makes a good argument, but someone still needs to be good at something. Brock was an NCAA championship level wrestler and Poatan was a championship level striker. Also, this is probably more applicable to certain weight classes. I think LW and WW would require a more diverse skillset.
 
You could argue Wilder was a pretty limited boxer tbf and he was champ but he is basically right, MMA is one of the easier sports to become a champ in, manly because talent pool is pretty shallow.

At the end of the day the difficulty to be a champ in any sport comes down to how many people actually compete in that sport.
 
He is correct, but it is also the easiest sport to get a title shot in based on name recognition.

Guys like O'Malley, Pereira, Brock are legit and good fighters, but they also skipped the line. It isn't like you can be a hot shot tennis player and you are just plunked into the Wimbeldon finals. You still have to beat 4 other guys to get there.

Or in golf you don't get to start in the final round of the Masters at -12 because you are Charlie Woods.

MMA is barely a proper sport. Anyone anywhere at any time could get a title shot based on the whim of Dana.

Even Matt Serra. Was he champ and did he beat GSP? Yes. Did he deserve it? Nope. He only got the title shot because the UFC wanted to make money off a shitty reality TV show. There's no reality TV show alternative route to the Stanley Cup finals lol.
 
People are going to get hung up on the fact he said easiest. It may be the easiest but that doesn’t make it easy. It’s still very hard to pull off. A lot of training and dedication still involved.
 
ComfortablyNumb55 said:
Jake Paul really out here exposing the UFC.
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Jake Paul isn't exposing anything until he steps into the cage with a current Top 5 MMA fighter in his weight class in an MMA fight. I don't think DJ is wrong, but Jake has nothing to do with this.
 
MXZT said:
I disagree, there is plenty of talent in the MMA pool. It's just promoters who fuck up the integrity of the sport by fast tracking a guys like Lesnar to fight for a HW belt with 2-1 record. There is no way Lesnar would have fought for the title if he got a shot after having 12 fights first. He would have definitely lost along the way.
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But Lesnar won the belt. If a 2-1 boxer could get a title shot he won’t win. Luck plays a lot into MMA. You almost never see lucky wins in boxing. Of course Lesnar could get a title shot after 12 fights. What does a loss mean? Masvidal got two title shots just recently lol.

In boxing you could give a guy like Naoya Inoe, a phenomenal champ, 10 fights against a very good champ like Stephen Fulton and Inoe’s talent would make it impossible for Fulton to win even once. 10/10 Inoe wins. In MMA even a phenomenal champ like GSP can lose to Serra. Aldo losing to MacGregor is similar. There’s tons of examples in MMA of the better fighter losing. That rarely happens in boxing.

I definitely prefer MMA to boxing (and I’m sure DJ does also) but that’s just a fact.
Aegon Spengler said:
I edited after that, but, think about it this way.

Imagine you’re a backup kicker on an NFL team in your rookie year. You could win a Super Bowl championship and never get any play time at all; by the time you’re 19 you’re a world champ and all you did was go to practice (or maybe 22 or something? Not sure what the youngest age for football players is)
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I don’t think you can compare individual sports to team sports in this way.
 
Jesus H. Sherdog said:
But Lesnar won the belt. If a 2-1 boxer could get a title shot he won’t win. Luck plays a lot into MMA. You almost never see lucky wins in boxing. Of course Lesnar could get a title shot after 12 fights. What does a loss mean? Masvidal got two title shots just recently lol.

In boxing you could give a guy like Naoya Inoe, a phenomenal champ, 10 fights against a very good champ like Stephen Fulton and Inoe’s talent would make it impossible for Fulton to win even once. 10/10 Inoe wins. In MMA even a phenomenal champ like GSP can lose to Serra. Aldo losing to MacGregor is similar. There’s tons of examples in MMA of the better fighter losing. That rarely happens in boxing.

I definitely prefer MMA to boxing (and I’m sure DJ does also) but that’s just a fact.

I don’t think you can compare individual sports to team sports in this way.
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Lesnar was anomaly I'll tell you that. One guy I'd say who won a championship with even a 0-0 record is Lomachenko. So it's been done in boxing as well.
 
MXZT said:
Lesnar was anomaly I'll tell you that. One guy I'd say who won a championship with even a 0-0 record is Lomachenko. So it's been done in boxing as well.
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Loma was also an anomaly. But again, Lomachenko had almost 400 amateur wins and was boxing from a young age, regarded as one of the greatest amateur careers of all time. He had been competing in the sport his entire life, won multiple Olympic gold medals, multiple world championship gold medals. Lesnar just picked it up. Lesnar had no amateur career.

Also just to nitpick but Lomachenko got his first world title shot in his second fight lol. And he lost. He won the title in his third pro fight.
 
Jesus H. Sherdog said:
Loma was also an anomaly. But again, Lomachenko had almost 400 amateur wins and was boxing from a young age, regarded as one of the greatest amateur careers of all time. He had been competing in the sport his entire life, won multiple Olympic gold medals, multiple world championship gold medals. Lesnar just picked it up. Lesnar had no amateur career.

Also just to nitpick but Lomachenko got his first world title shot in his second fight lol. And he lost. He won the title in his third pro fight.
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I didn't read his wiki properly my bad. It said he won the international belt in his first fight whatever that is. And then he lost to Salido for the vacant belt. Well anywho they are both anomalies indeed. lol
 
Winning the championship is relatively easy, holding onto it is not.

To be honest boxing's had some pretty mediocre title holders as well, just because there's so many of them.
 
I’d guess he’s right.
Jake Paul has handily defeated like 4 mma champs right?
 
Imagine never playing tennis or golf in any kind of organized league and then joining in your 30’s and becoming champion like Brock did.

Hate on him all you want but that isn’t happening in any other individual sport.
 
Uncertainly Principled said:
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But it's probably harder to maintain dominance in a sport with so many facets, whereas once you master boxing/golf/tennis/other individual sports you can rule without too much evolution until your body/brain fails you

MMartists need to constantly evolve - it's a harder sport overall, unquestionably

Also MMA has the popularity (Brock) & storyline (Alex) variables in greater dose than boxing.
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Is it harder to evolve in if someone so inexperienced can be a champ? I do think the facets brings more volatility, which makes it harder to stay dominant. But then again, we have had a lot of long standing champs over the last 15 years, MM, Aldo, GSP, Silva, Jones. So, how hard is it really? I'm torn and just talking out loud.
 
bill-murray-scrooge.gif
 
He's right. Because of talent pool and training getting fine tuned to the ruleset over a century.

But the fact remains, elite vs elite at the same weight class, the boxer gets his shit pushed in 9/10. It's too much of a restricted ruleset.

With a kickboxer it's more like 7/10. The upright stance makes it easy for takedowns and kicks can get caught.
 
1s1k said:
Imagine never playing tennis or golf in any kind of organized league and then joining in your 30’s and becoming champion like Brock did.

Hate on him all you want but that isn’t happening in any other individual sport.
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You know this makes no sense. It’s more like imagine being a national collegiate champion at tennis and becoming pickle ball world champion.
 
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