UFC champ Demetrious Johnson's plan? It still involves Ray Borg – for now

EDMONTON – UFC flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson had thoughts of fighting three times in 2017. Those went out the window when Ray Borg was forced off tonight’s UFC 215 event.

Now, Johnson is waiting to see if his manager and the UFC can reschedule the fight for UFC 216, which takes place Oct. 7.

“If they call back and say Oct. 7 isn’t going to work, we’re going to have to push it longer, and then I’ll be like, I might just be done for the year,” Johnson (26-2-1 MMA, 14-1-1 UFC) said backstage during today’s UFC 215 event, which he was supposed to headline at Edmonton’s Rogers Place before Borg (11-2 MMA, 5-2 UFC) fell ill.

Johnson, who aimed to break the UFC’s all-time record for title defenses with 11, said he can accommodate one short delay of the fight. He said he’d done so before when he was asked to extend his training camp for a fight with Chris Cariaso so he could headline UFC 178 with would-be headliner Daniel Cormier injured.

Extend his scheduled date more than a month, and Johnson’s flexibility goes. He cited a quick turnaround between a UFC 197 meeting with Henry Cejudo and proposed headliner at UFC 201 as the cause of a knee injury that delayed his career.

“I’m not going to do six or seven weeks,” Johnson said. “That’s when injuries happen.”

Yet the flyweight champ expressed no ill will toward Borg, whose struggles with weight have prompted to misses at the scale in addition to injuries that have scratched fights.

“Don’t get me wrong, it’s absolutely devastating to go through eight weeks of training camp and wow, what a waste of (expletive) time – all the interviews,” Johnson said. “But it’s part of the game. I wish him nothing but the best. I hope he gets healthy, and we get this going.”

Johnson empathized with Borg’s plight, because he’s experienced it himself.

“The most times I get sick is when I’m in training camp, because my body is broken down, and I’m not healthy,” he said. “And when you’re cutting weight, I’m dehydrating myself.

“Blatantly honest, weight-cutting is not good for you. But we want to fight guys that are (5-foot-3) and 5-4 and not guys who are 5-11 and 5-10, so that’s why there’s weight cuts. So, when you cut weight, you’re going to get sick. It’s the nature of the beast. Your immune system is low, and it just happens.”

Johnson deflected a question of whether the UFC had given him any money for showing up to the event, saying his management is working on it. He instead praised his team and the promotion for notifying him on the last-minute cancellation rather than waiting until he’d cut weight to fight.

“I can turn this interview into one thousand clickbaits if I want to,” he said. “But that’s not the kind of guy I am.”

Watch the above video, and for complete coverage of UFC 215, check out the UFC Events section of the site.