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Demetrious Johnson has long been considered to be one of the best grapplers in MMA but he is now starting to prove that by competing in grappling tournaments.
The ONE flyweight MMA world champion, a GOAT contender in the all-encompassing discipline, has become obsessed with swapping out the gloves for a gi and getting on to the mats to really test himself in new ways.
His latest venture into the grappling world came at the 2024 IBJJF Pan American Championships this past weekend, where Johnson secured the gold in the masters 2 featherweight division at brown belt.
He also won silver in the openweight division, having been submitted for the first time in his BJJ career by an opponent that had a huge size advantage over him.
'Mighty Mouse' reflected on the experience during a video on his YouTube channel, in which he thanked everyone that contributed to this step:
"It was an awesome experience, you know. Super grateful. I mean professor Lucas, Professor Bibiano, I mean everybody who helped me, all those guys who helped me for the preparation. I won my division, came up second place in the openweight division, lost to the heavyweight division, he won his division."
Demetrious Johnson also reflected on where he went wrong in failing to win the openweight division when taking on a much larger opponent:
"Just small technical errors, I did a beautiful takedown, but he was able to extend me and lock me up and that's the first time I was ever submitted in a competition."
Watch the full video below:
Demetrious Johnson is living up to his reputation and nickname
It's not necesarily surprising that Demetrious Johnson would take to competing in jiu-jitsu tournaments this well given his MMA career.
'Mighty Mouse' already has some of the best grappling and one of the strongest minds that we have ever seen in the sport and he has been able to effortlessly transition both skills into a new field.
While the ONE flyweight MMA world champion might be used to competing against larger opponents, openweight is just another way that he can really challenge himself.
Johnson appears to be relishing all of these new challenges and puzzles that he is yet to solve and anyone who knows the champ knows that he is only going to get better from here on out.
