Demetrious Johnson didn’t let Ray Borg off easy for some pre-fight banter.
This past Saturday night (Oct. 7), Johnson defended his Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) flyweight title against Borg. “Mighty Mouse” retained his title with a highlight reel submission. The successful title defense meant Johnson broke Anderson Silva’s UFC record.
At the ceremonial weigh-ins before the event, Borg engaged in some trash talking. Johnson told Ariel Helwani on MMAFighting.com‘s “The MMA Hour” that he still gives his opponent props:
“Ray Borg is tough. Very, very tough. I hit him with some good shots, some good knees to the liver, a couple liver kicks, and I felt that he was always going to be tough. And that was the thing when I fought him. When you look at his previous fights, the thing he’s really good at that people don’t appreciate is, one, he’s very tough, two, he’s very good at the scrambles. So it almost kinda reminds me of Tim Elliot — Tim Elliot will let you get his back. He’ll let you have his back, that way when you go down for the choke, he’ll scramble and end up on top, and then next thing you know, you’re on your back and you have to get off.”
With that said, Johnson didn’t want to let Borg off the hook.
“So when I was with Ray Borg, I was like, ‘Dude, you’re letting me have this, that’s fine. I’m going to let you think I’m going to go for it, and then you when you try to scramble, I’m going to be ahead of you in the scramble, because you think you think you’re a better scrambler than I am, because I remember you saying that my scrambling ability is horrible.’ I didn’t bother me (that he said that), it’s just that I just wanted to prove a point.”
