Flyweight legend Demetrious “Mighty Mouse” Johnson recently retired from his iconic MMA career. Johnson made this announcement at ONE 168 in Denver on September 6.
Johnson is considered one of the greatest MMA fighters and has had an incredible run throughout his career. The fighter has finally decided to hang up his gloves and leave the game on as the reigning ONE Flyweight MMA World Champion.
The fighter gave a closing speech and revealed he had made plans to retire, especially after defeating rival Adriano Morales in 2023. Alot of fighters and even his former promtion owner CEO Dana White has come out to support him.
“I knew I was going to retire after I fought Adriano the third time after I did the press conference. I had my kids. And I was walking, and I was like, ‘Damn, is this what my life is right here? Is this it?’
“And I was like, ‘I’m gonna take a year off, keep on training, and see if I miss it.’ Because I didn’t want to be the athlete who just retires and I’m back home and I’m training, and I’m like ‘Oh man, I wish I could unretire. I wanna come back and fight.’ And then come back out of retirement and fight again.
“So, my New Year’s resolution this year was that I was gonna force myself not to fight. I need to start using my brain, my intellect, my charisma, my creativity to start making money and building my brand.
“I was sitting at home, and I was like, ‘I don’t miss it.’ It’s a young man’s game. I’m 38 years old. I’m spending time with my kids and my wife, and I just knew that this was the right time to do it.”
Johnson is grateful for his time in the MMA and will always cherish the moments there, but he would rather sit back and spend time with his family.
“I just wanna enjoy what I’ve done and walk away. And I talked to a lot of guys – GSP was one. He was like, ‘There’s always gonna be another guy.’ That’s why he retired. Urijah Faber, he was like, ‘We only get a short amount of time in our life where we could be a professional athlete and fight at the highest level.’
“So it is pretty hard, but I am relieved to be able to say I’m finally done.”
“For me, I was gonna do it kinda silently, but after talking to Chatri, talking to my wife, they were like, ‘Well, it’s not always about you. It’s about your fans.’
“And I’m grateful I did it the way I did. I think the package that ONE Championship and Chatri put together was absolutely amazing.”
The fighter was known as logical and has always used impressive strategies to take down opponents. However, it seems the fighter is no longer interested in this and gave his reasons why.
“I’m not going to fight anymore. And the reason why is, um, I don’t find mixed martial arts fun anymore. Reason why is because I find more fulfillment in doing Jiu-Jitsu because I feel it’s harder. I find more fulfillment in helping and training with different people.”
“If I ever wanted to feel, how does, I want to feel Merab’s gas tank. I want to see how good he is. I want to feel his strength. The only way that would ever happen is if me and you were to fight each other. If I was a professional athlete, right, it would just never happen. But if I’m like, hey, I don’t care about winning. I don’t care about, you know, ever have an opportunity to fight you. Hey Merab, can I come train with you? Yeah, you’re like, Demetrious come train. And then when we train together, you’re not going to have like, I need to beat you, you’re trying to learn from me. I don’t know, I’ve never trained outside of training camp when I would fight.”
“Once I get ready for a fight and I beat somebody. It’s like, okay, I mean I beat him, I made this money, which is great. But I didn’t get to learn anything in that 25 minutes, if that makes sense.”
