Two men who have felt the devastating power of Anthony Johnson are Dan Hardy and Charlie Brenneman.
“Rumble” will get another crack at Daniel Cormier for the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) light heavyweight title. For some, it’s hard to believe that Johnson was once a welterweight. It was during his run in the 170-pound division where he introduced his striking to Hardy and Brenneman.
Hardy jokingly told UFC.com that he thought he got on someone’s bad side when he was booked to face Johnson:
“There was a part of me that thought to myself, ‘I’ve pissed off somebody in the UFC. I don’t know what I’ve done wrong, but I’m coming off my first ever knockout loss, and they put me against a guy that’s never not knocked a welterweight out.’ There’s a weird period after getting knocked out where you question whether you can take a shot anymore. My solution was to watch loads and loads of Wanderlei Silva fights because I saw that guy taking shots and walking through them and I knew that I could do that if I needed to.”
While “The Outlaw” was able to go the distance with “Rumble,” Brenneman wasn’t as fortunate. He compared Johnson’s high kick to a baseball bat and a brick wall.
“When my shoulder hit the cage, I remember seeing him take that stutter step into his high left kick and seeing his foot leaving the ground and coming to my face, but not having the brain-muscle connection to do anything about it. I saw it, like a baseball bat, coming right at my face. It’s terrible. It’s like sprinting into a brick wall and saying, ‘I can’t stop’ and boom, you hit the wall.”
“Rumble” challenges Cormier for the light heavyweight gold on April 8 inside the KeyBank Center in Buffalo, NY. The fight will serve as UFC 210’s main event.
