Demetrious Johnson says fighting lanky Adriano Moraes for the first time was "one of the hardest things" in his career

Demetrious Johnson has always been considered to be one of the best minds in combat sports period.

The ONE flyweight MMA world champion may be an elite competitor in all aspects of MMA but his most dangerous weapon might just be the way he thinks about competition and breaks it all down.

That being said, what is more interesting than seeing ‘Mighty Mouse’ watch and break down the most substantial loss of his career?

Johnson has lost fights before, even if there was a huge gap and win streak separating them for a long time. When he arrived at ONE Championship, he may have met his match.

Adriano Moraes doesn’t just have his own fair share of championship experience, he’s incredibly high level and his size and power make him dangerous at all times.

Having won the ONE Flyweight World Grand Prix, Johnson challenged Moraes for the world championship at ONE on TNT 1.

For the first time in his career, the all-time great was knocked out after the Brazilian caught him with a knee on the ground.

In a recent YouTube video on his channel, Demetrious Johnson rewatched the fight and gave his analysis of what went wrong for him on the night.

Describing it as one of the most difficult things he has ever faced, the flyweight champ spoke about how closing the distance on the larger and more powerful man caused him a lot of issues in their first meeting:

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“This is one of the hardest things that I had, the hardest time in my whole entire career at this point, was to cross the void [closing the distance] and how I was trying to cross it by punching across the distance and not just walking across the distance.”

‘Mighty Mouse’ continued, stating that Moraes’ offense made him second guess a lot of what he was doing in their first encounter:

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“That was my biggest thing about this fight, not walking across the distance by punching across the distance because I was so scared of what he was going to do, right?”

Watch the full fight reaction video below:

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