ONE Championship: Demetrious Johnson hopes he and Adriano Moraes ‘can get this done with’
- UFC legend and ONE flyweight champ will finally tangle in ONE on TNT 1 main event on Thursday morning
- Johnson admits frustration over series of postponements and setbacks – ‘I was like, oh my god, can we just fight already?’
There can’t be many high-profile fights in MMA history that have been longer in the making than Demetrious Johnson vs Adriano Moraes.
“Mighty Mouse” officially earned his shot at ONE Championship’s flyweight title after winning the Asian promotion’s flyweight grand prix final in October 2019, setting up a mouthwatering showdown between the former UFC champ and dominant Brazilian submission specialist Moraes.
But then the setbacks started.
“It’s been one of those things where it was offered actually a year and a half ago, it was good to go. Then this happened and that happened,” ONE chairman and CEO Chatri Sityodtong told SCMP MMA.
“Moraes couldn’t leave the country because he was in the process of getting his green card and his US citizenship. We were doing events but he had to sit out. We didn’t want to strip him because we really appreciate Adriano Moraes a lot.
“He asked for a favour. He said, ‘Guys, I can’t leave America for 12 months’. Then we were like, ‘Oh man. How do we finagle this?’ Then Covid hit. So it was just one thing after another.”