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(This story appears in today’s edition of USA TODAY.)
For the longest time, Demetrious Johnson’s coach didn’t notice him. That’s how it seemed to Johnson, anyway.
That’s how it felt way back before he was the UFC flyweight champ, before anybody was throwing his name in a sentence along with phrases like “pound-for-pound best.”
When it all started, he was just another guy in a Seattle-area gym, hitting the heavy bag and doing drills.
“I was just doing it for a hobby,” Johnson (22-2-1 MMA, 10-1-1 UFC) tells USA TODAY Sports. “I didn’t seek out the best gym in the world or anything. I was just looking for a place to work out.”
For about two years, by Johnson’s recollection, that’s how it stayed. It was nothing serious, just something to do in his off-hours when he wasn’t working his factory job. But Johnson, a standout wrestler in high school, turned out to be pretty good at martial arts. Soon, he got invited to join the fight team at AMC Pankration in Kirkland, Wash., and then he got an offer to participate in an amateur fight at an event promoted by the gym’s founder, retired fighter and trainer Matt Hume.
“I remember he was at the fight, just sitting there and watching,” Johnson says. “I had no idea who he was. Eventually, I found out.”
Demetrious Johnson
What Johnson didn’t know was that Hume had been keeping an eye on him for some time by that point. What neither of them could know yet was the extent to which they’d each found a kindred spirit in the other, someone who was just as obsessive about technique and perfection, and just as hard to please by mere victory alone.
What would follow was a relationship that went beyond fighter and coach, and which endures still as Johnson prepares to defend his 125-pound title for the seventh consecutive time, this time in a Saturday rematch with John Dodson (17-6 MMA, 6-1 UFC) at UFC 191 at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas (10 p.m. ET, pay-per-view).
“From (Johnson’s) perspective, it might seem like I didn’t notice him early on – but that would not be correct,” says Hume, who had his first professional MMA bout in 1994 before assuming every role from trainer to promoter to official throughout a well-traveled career in the fight game.
According to Hume, he recognized Johnson’s athletic ability early on, but gave him space in order to assess what it was Johnson intended to do with his natural gifts. Once he saw that Johnson was “on a path toward becoming a true martial artist,” Hume says, he encouraged him to get serious about a career as a fighter.
For Hume, that meant convincing Johnson to quit his full-time job, which the fighter had insisted on keeping even after he’d won two straight in the UFC and was next in line to fight for the bantamweight title.
“That was the point where I said, ‘Come on, you’re fighting for the world title. You really need to quit your job and focus solely on this,'” Hume says. “I take that as a huge responsibility. I would never tell someone to quit their job unless I knew they were going to make it.”
Johnson was reluctant. He’d seen what the life of a pro fighter was like, and financially stable wasn’t one of the ways he’d have described it.
“For me, that was a scary thought, quitting my job,” Johnson said. “When you work full-time, you know you’re going to get a check on time. When you’re a mixed martial artist, you only get paid when you fight. My first fight, I was making $1,000. That’s nothing if you have a mortgage.”
What finally convinced him, he said, was Hume’s faith in him. This was the same perfectionist coach who still found room for improvement after Johnson won a fight via first-round head kick knockout. He wasn’t the type to inflate egos.
“He was the one who kept on telling me, ‘You’re going to be a world champion,'” says Johnson. “He really believed that.”
Now that Hume’s prediction has come true, Johnson has set his sights on other goals, like breaking former middleweight champion Anderson Silva’s record of 10 consecutive UFC title defenses. But Hume’s aspirations for Johnson are less concrete.
“It’s the goal of becoming a perfect martial artist,” Hume says, “with perfect technique.”
For the latest on UFC 191, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.