“Mighty Mouse” is set for a record breaking night when he defends his title against Ray Borg at UFC 215 this Saturday
Should Johnson beat Borg, he will eclipse the joint record of 10 consecutive title defenses currently shared with Anderson Silva.
Despite the occasion, Johnson feels that the UFC has failed to promote the event adequately. The 125-pound dominant champion has an interesting theory as to why the promotion is failing to engage its potential audience when it comes to certain cards, however:
“It’s so damn hard, there’s so many UFC fights,” Johnson said during a media scrum (via MMA Fighting). “I was literally having breakfast and I was talking to one of the guys who works for UFC and I was like yo, you guys just got back from Rotterdam, are you getting ready to go back home to Las Vegas and relax?”
“He was like ‘No, I’m going to Pittsburgh.’ Pittsburgh? I’m like there’s a fight card next Saturday? He goes ‘Yeah!’ There’s just too many back to back, back to back, back to back. 16 [events] in 18 weeks. There’s just too many, you know?”
“I think for the UFC, maybe next year they’ll sit down and rethink things, but I dunno, I’m not part of the marketing team, the PR team of the UFC. But for me, they’ve got a big fight coming up which is Madison Square Garden. So for example, at the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight they promoted UFC 217 at MSG when they had UFC 215 coming up and UFC 216 coming up.”
“So they took a chance, like ‘Hey I gotta promote UFC 215, promote UFC 216, we’re gonna skip both of those and promote a promo for UFC 217,” Demetrious finished. “So when they’re doing stuff like that, it’s like … you gotta look at what they’re gonna do. And that’s fine. I’m not part of that team. As for me, I would have shown UFC 215 because that’s the next thing coming up, what I would have focused on selling.”
