At UFC 197, varying shades of greatness from 2 of MMA's best fighters

If only the UFC still named its events, then it could have given Saturday’s event the tagline it deserved. I’m thinking something along the lines of “UFC 197: Case Studies in Greatness.”

At MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, we saw two of the best fighters in the world in action, only they weren’t fighting each other. They weren’t even fighting anyone who could really push them, and the outcomes were the same, yet very different.

First came UFC flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson, the man most likely to trigger whatever mechanism it is that makes UFC commentators repeat the phrase “pound-for-pound best” over and over again.

Johnson (24-2-1 MMA, 12-1-1 UFC) took on Henry Cejudo in a fight that seemed competitive on paper. Cejudo (10-1 MMA, 4-1 UFC) was undefeated. He had an Olympic gold medal from his days as a wrestler. He had the rare distinction of being an active UFC flyweight who Johnson hadn’t already dominated. He was inevitable, really.

That he lasted just a shade under three minutes in the cage with Johnson is proof not that he was a paper tiger all along, but that Johnson really is that good. He’s so good that we get bored with it. He’s so good that we run out of words for it. That’s how we end up hammering phrases like the pound-for-pound thing until they’ve lost all meaning, and also how we end taking stuff like victory and a flawless performance pretty much for granted.

Demetrious Johnson

The matchup with Cejudo at least promised us a new answer to an old question: Is there anyone in his own division who can reliably take “Mighty Mouse” down? Cejudo, with all his wrestling credentials, proved that there is. He also proved that it didn’t really matter, as Johnson popped right back to his feet and then set about destroying the challenger with knees.

It was an efficient destruction, too. Johnson dug his kneecap into Cejudo’s ribs, his thighs, his skull, then began the list over again until something in Cejudo’s body decided it’d had enough. A couple punches later and Johnson had the second-fastest finish of his UFC tenure, and against the opponent who was supposed to finally present him with a unique challenge.

After that it was Jon Jones’ (22-1 MMA, 16-1 UFC) turn to fight for the interim version of a title he never lost, and against an opponent who entered the cage looking like he was living a bad dream.

Nothing about Ovince Saint Preux’s (19-8 MMA, 7-3 UFC) pre-fight demeanor, from his interviews to his body language, suggested a man on a quest to shock the world. Instead the image we saw was of a man on a quest to survive, but without being entirely sure that he could even achieve that.

That’s what makes it tough to tell what we should make of Jones’ dominant decision victory. After a tumultuous year outside the cage, the former (and now current interim) champ won every round, was never in anything resembling real trouble, yet couldn’t quite reach the nearly superhuman levels we’ve come to expect from him.

Was it ring rust? Was it all the distractions? Did he underestimate his late-notice replacement opponent? Or was he simply fighting a guy who was happy just to be there, and who was far enough down the rankings that nothing less than a literal execution would have impressed us anyway?

Maybe it can be all of those. Maybe that’s one of the problems with being one of the greats. Just as Johnson has worn out all our superlatives, Jones has set the bar so high for himself that a one-sided win and a few paltry spinning elbows now fail to move us. That’s the bare minimum of what we expect from him.

Breaking the other guy’s arm and demolishing his will to win would be a good night of work for most other fighters. But for Jones? Somehow it feels like a letdown.

It also feels like a ramping up, considering his rollercoaster life over the last year. Jones admitted after the fight that he didn’t feel great about his performance, and hadn’t been able to do all that he wanted to do. This, perhaps, was a necessary step on the path to regaining that old effortless brilliance, which he’ll need if he’s going to beat current champion Daniel Cormier for the second time in as many years.

But hey, at least Jones has a way forward. Johnson, he has other problems now that he’s decimated his entire division, and ruined a bunch of otherwise serviceable adjectives in the process. So many different ways to be great in this sport, and yet none of them are easy. Ask Saint Preux and Cejudo and you’ll learn that they are, however, preferable to the alternative.

For complete coverage of UFC 197, check out the UFC Events section of the site.