10 fighters who feuded with the UFC

#8 Demetrious Johnson

Demetrious Johnson lost his patience with the UFC in 2017

Former UFC Flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson was often labelled by the UFC as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world, but due to his apparent lack of box-office drawing power despite countless numbers of main events and television exposure, he never truly seemed like one of the promotion’s favourite fighters.

Still, few expected what happened in the summer of 2017, when Johnson ended up going on an angry rant regarding his treatment by the UFC and the apparent disrespect he’d felt from the promotion and from Dana White. Johnson claimed that the despite being a “company man”, the UFC were mistreating him by refusing to allow him a cut of the pay-per-view profits – a deal awarded to plenty of other fighters on the roster.

Johnson claimed that negotiations for what would be the historic 11th defense of his Flyweight title went awry when he attempted to discuss a fight with Cody Garbrandt and not Ray Borg as initially planned. The UFC apparently balked and demanded he fight Borg, only for Dana White to supposedly decide he should fight TJ Dillashaw instead, and if he refused, the Flyweight division would be shut down.

The whole issue was quietly smoothed over and Johnson ended up fighting Borg as per the original plan, but after his loss to Henry Cejudo this summer, he’s since been “traded” to ONE FC with Ben Askren going the other way – suggesting the bad blood between both parties was never truly resolved.