Johnson Ready to Rumble

Originally posted on MMAweekly.com

Anthony Johnson will fight this weekend on less than two months notice at Ultimate Fight Night 17 against Luigi Fioravanti.

Training for his upcoming fight, Johnson feels very confident even though it's on short notice. “Everything is going so smooth,” he said in a recent interview with MMAWeekly Radio. “It's going even better than... for my last fight.”

Many fighters only fight three times a year and like to space out their fights every three to four months. Johnson, however, likes to stay active and fight as often as possible. “I like to stay as busy as I can. After my fight, I went home to Georgia and got a little fat. My grandmother cooked me some food. Then the Luigi fight came up. I love fighting for the UFC, so whenever they want me to fight, 99.9% of the time I'm going to say okay. I hate not being active,” he said. “Training gets old and you want to just go in there and fight, so they gave me this opportunity and I took it.”

Johnson burst onto the scene in the Ultimate Fighting Championship when he knocked out Chad Reiner just 13 seconds into the first round. After dropping his next fight to Rich Clementi, he brutally knocked out Ultimate Fighter runner-up Tommy Speer. Though the fight that really caught everyone's attention was Kevin Burns. Burns and Johnson were having an entertaining fight until Burns inadvertently poked Johnson in the eye. Unfortunately, Johnson was unable to continue and the fight was ruled a TKO loss, much to his chagrin.

Getting a shot at redemption, he and Burns rematched five months later at The Ultimate Fighter 8 Finale. Like music to his ears, Johnson collapsed Burns with a brutal head kick that left him unconscious. “Everybody was sending me texts and hitting me up on Myspace just saying 'get your revenge and knock him out.' With Kevin, this last time, I didn't want to just knock him out. I wanted to beat him up a little bit and then knock him out. In my opinion, it ended the way it needed to end.”


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