UFC flyweight champion Alexandre Pantoja defeated former Rizin champion Kai Asakura to defend his belt for the third time at UFC 310 on Saturday night and then unexpectedly called out recently retired star Demetrious ‘Mighty Mouse’ Johnson in his post-fight interview.
However, the 38-year-old Johnson has since responded to let the world know he has no intention of fighting again.
“My Black ass ain’t coming out of retirement,” Johnson said on his own YouTube channel. “Why would I do that? The bank account is sitting nice and good. 38 years old, 11 consecutive title defenses. The champ ain’t coming back.”
It wouldn’t have been an easy fight to put together anyway as though Johnson is widely considered the greatest ever flyweight, he hasn’t fought in the UFC since a shock fighter-trading swap for ONE FC’s Ben Askren back in 2018 after his title reign and 13-fight winning streak came to an end against Henry Cejudo.
Johnson went on to enjoy a successful and lucrative run in ONE FC, winning their flyweight grand-prix and then the title, which he defended once before hanging up his gloves.
“Guys I’m retired. I have no interest to fight anymore,” Johnson said. “I’m so happy for Alex Pantoja. I’m happy he got his third title defense. I’m so happy for him. I always thought he was an amazing athlete. He’s the greatest flyweight in the world right now. I think the greatest flyweights in the world right now are all at American Top Team. You have Alex Pantoja, Adriano Moraes and then you also have Kyoji Horiguchi. Those three guys are probably the best athletes in the world.
“I am not the best flyweight in the world anymore. My Black ass is retired and I’m happily retired. I ain’t going to be no motherf*cking Jose Aldo. I ain’t going to be no motherf*cking Donald Cerrone coming back to fight. There ain’t no point to coming back to fight. What am I going to prove when I come back to f*cking fight?”
Johnson then went on to underline that he won’t be changing his mind by revealing that he’d already turned down a huge sum of money to fight again for ONE FC.
“You know what the beautiful thing about the position I’m in is? I’ve been offered $2 million dollars to come and do one fight. One fight and what do you guys think I said? I said no. I said absolutely no. It wasn’t with the UFC. It wasn’t against Alex Pantoja. I’m not going to tell you who it was with but I got offered $2 million dollars to fight and there comes a point in time in an athlete’s career where you sit back and you’ll be like why am I fighting? Is it to be the best in the world? Shit, I was the best in the world for six years. Not just in America but also in Japan and I went up a division. I went to 135 instead of 125.
“Then you sit back when I made that decision ‘I don’t care to fight anymore,’ I gave myself a full-blown year to see if I’m going to miss it. [To see] if it’s my identity and I didn’t miss it.”
