“I still believe I can submit him” - Adriano Moraes plotting tap out of Demetrious Johnson

Adriano Moraes is more than ready to run it back with Demerious Johnson. The two will do just that when they meet for the second time in the ONE on Prime Video 1 main event on August 26.

In their first meeting, Moraes shocked the MMA community when he handed ‘Mighty Mouse’ his first knockout loss in the second round of their ONE on TNT 1 contest. More than a year later, the two flyweight superstars will clash once again with Moraes’ ONE flyweight world championship hanging in the balance.

Back in July, Adriano Moraes spoke with ONE Championship about the impending rematch and shared his intentions to submit DJ in front of a global audience, which now also includes 200 million Amazon Prime subscribers.

"This is the kind of fight that is very difficult to predict. Demetrious Johnson is a very smart guy, very tough, and I know he’s coming in very hungry for this rematch. I’m training a lot. I want to show my evolution as an athlete, so I believe I can get a submission in the fourth round.”

Recently, the promotion once again caught up with ‘Mikinho’ and asked if he was still confident about ending the massive main event with a submission, as he had previously predicted. Adriano Moraes said:

“This is a fight that will be very busy. I believe [Demetrious Johnson] will be very hungry [in] this rematch. But I still believe I can submit him in the third or fourth round.”

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Demetrious Johnson will be prepared to take things to the ground against Adriano Moraes

While Adriano Moraes’ grappling game is objectively better than that of his challenger, submitting ‘Mighty Mouse’ may be harder than he thinks.

Leading up to the epic rematch, Demetrious Johnson has put an added focus on his Brazilian jiu-jitsu skills. Speaking to ONE, Johnson confirmed that he was actively working towards his BJJ black belt.

“I went and signed up at Professor Yan McCane’s place, GRPL Club, and I’m there working toward my black belt, and I’m just soaking up knowledge.”

Johnson also discussed switching up his training this time around to put more emphasis on grappling and mixed martial arts over conditioning, which has seemingly never been a problem for ‘Mighty Mouse'.

“I still go to the gym, but that’s only for one day a week. I’m grappling four or five times a week now, and that’s an hour and a half to two hours. And then after that, I’ll go do mixed martial arts for two hours. So now I’ll put in more hours into training mixed martial arts than I was in my previous fights.”