We get it, Anthony Johnson has power – but is power enough to make him champ?

Anthony Johnson

Take your current list of very bad ideas – the usual stuff like ordering seafood at a bowling alley, joking about bomb threats while in line at airport security, dating anyone who lists magazines when asked for their all-time favorite books – and add one more new entry in light of Saturday night’s events in Stockholm: Poking Anthony Johnson in the eye.

Don’t do it. Not even on accident. Not even as a joke. Not even a little bit.

Alexander Gustafsson learned this the hard way at UFC on FOX 14. All he did was graze “Rumble’s” eye, just enough to cause a brief pause in the action, hardly enough to be worth mentioning. Except that, as soon as the fight was restarted, it was well on its way to being over.

One right hand from Johnson (19-4 MMA, 10-4 UFC) put Gustafsson (16-3 MMA, 8-3 UFC) down. The dozen or so that followed put him as far away from a title shot as he’s been in years, as Johnson blasted his way to a first-round TKO victory that should (you know, in a world where title shot promises mean what they say) set him up for a crack at UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones (20-1 MMA, 15-1 UFC).

Whether it will actually work out that way remains to be seen, but for now it seems there’s a new pecking order at 205 pounds. And somehow, because this sport is bizarre and wonderful and insane, right near the top is a guy who couldn’t quite cut it as a welterweight, a guy who just took out the toughest test Jones has ever faced, a guy who, this time last year, was still more a cautionary tale than a potential UFC contender.

That’s how quickly things can change in the wild world of professional cage fighting. It just makes you wonder, can they change a little bit more? Is an unexpected challenger like Johnson right at the upper limit of how much upheaval we can stand, or could he realistically become an unexpected champion too?

Anthony Johnson

Coming into Saturday night’s arena-show headliner, it didn’t seem like a question we were even all that ready to ask. Sending Johnson to Sweden to fight the biggest thing since Ingemar Johansson? Let’s just say conditions seemed ideal for a Gustafsson launch. The UFC hyped his first fight with Jones as the greatest thing in light heavyweight history, with the unstated implication that their rematch would be the greatest thing to happen to the greatest thing. Beating Johnson, who came in riding an eight-fight winning streak against opponents of all shapes, sizes and skill sets? That’d be the perfect thing to give the rematch that just-in-time feel.

The only problem was Johnson, who apparently reacts to being poked in the eye the same way Popeye reacts to eating spinach. Put him in there with a champion who has a reputation for wandering fingers, and who knows, right?

Before this fight, I would have said that was the only halfway decent reason to think Johnson was a serious challenger for Jones, and I would have said it with a smirk. But after seeing Johnson dispatch Gustafsson, who’s proved to us that he can take a punch (and an elbow, and a knee, and a kick…), now there’s at least something to wonder about.

That something, as is so often the case once we’ve exhausted all the other fertile areas for doubt, is power. Johnson has it. He can hit you once and make you fall down, even if you’re not the type of person who gets hit once and then falls down. That’s what power is: the last great unknown. It’s the variable that can turn even the most familiar equation upside down. It’s a mystery and also a promise. Fight promoters build summer homes on stuff like that.

Eye-pokes notwithstanding, it’s the best reason there is to think that Johnson’s improbable resurrection can continue all the way to the top. But is it enough? Enough to be worth the price tag, maybe. Enough to test a champion who lately seems like a walking distraction in search of a reason.

But enough to win, to beat the greatest fighter walking the planet, to force those words – “…and new…” – out of Bruce Buffer’s mouth?

If you’d told me it would be before this weekend, I would have shook my head and smirked. Now? I’m still shaking my head. I’m not so sure I feel like smirking, though.

For complete coverage of UFC on FOX 14, check out the MMA Events section of the site.