A month ago, Demetrious Johnson was headlining UFC 215 in Canada with the chance to break the all time title defense record in UFC history with his fight against Ray Borg.
Unfortunately, Borg fell ill and the fight was cancelled just days ahead of the event, which left Johnson without his history making moment. Thankfully, Borg was able to recover quickly enough for the fight to be rescheduled at UFC 216 on Oct. 7 with the flyweight title fight joining an interim lightweight championship bout between Tony Ferguson and Kevin Lee.
When the fight between Johnson and Borg was first moved to the new card, the question remained whether or not they would get the headline spot ahead of Ferguson vs. Lee considering that matchup was for an interim title versus an undisputed belt.
Ultimately the UFC opted to leave Ferguson and Lee at the top of the card with Johnson and Borg now serving as the co-main event. While that might have seemed like a slight considering Johnson’s status as an undisputed champion not to mention the potential record breaking moment attached to his fight, he doesn’t see it that way at all.
In fact, Johnson couldn’t care less than he’s not billed as the headline attraction at UFC 216.
“I’m not worried about it,” Johnson told MMAWeekly when asked about his co-main event status. “I think you guys worry about more things than I do so I’m not worried about it.”
While some of Johnson’s supporters may believe he should be headlining the card, clearly the flyweight champion doesn’t have an issue with his placement as co-main event.
Johnson has dealt with this kind of upheaval before when he was scheduled as the co-main event at UFC 177 but then had to move his fight to a month later after he was asked to step into the main event slot at UFC 178.
Johnson admits it’s frustrating but more so because of the preparation and training involved but nothing due to his spot as the main event or co-main event on the card.
“This isn’t the first time it’s happened to me. It happened back when I was fighting Chris Cariaso at UFC 177 and [Alexander] Gustafsson got injured and I moved up and headlined at UFC 178. It added an extra four weeks to the training camp,” Johnson explained.
“Don’t get me wrong, it’s very frustrating when you get to the city and you’re cutting weight and you get a phone call saying ‘hey stop cutting weight’. It’s like f–king A. It is what it is, here we are now.”
