Former opponents recall power of Anthony Johnson

On April 8th in Buffalo, New York, light heavyweight #1 contender Anthony Johnson will step into the Octagon for a highly anticipated rematch with Daniel Cormier for the light heavyweight title.

Ahead of the fight, Johnson has been on a tear of the light heavyweight division, going on a 3-fightwin streak that has seen him pick up three straight knockout wins, with the most recent being a 13 second KO win over Glover Teixeira.

Ahead of his title fight, UFC.com caught up with two of Johnson’s past opponents (at much lighter weigh classes), Dan Hardy and Charlie Brenneman, to discuss the power of Johnson:

Brenneman, who fought Johnson at welterweight in 2011 recalled:

“When my shoulder hit the cage, I remember seeing him take that stutter step into his high left kick and seeing his foot leaving the ground and coming to my face, but not having the brain-muscle connection to do anything about it,” Brenneman recalled. “I saw it, like a baseball bat, coming right at my face. It’s terrible. It’s like sprinting into a brick wall and saying, ‘I can’t stop’ and boom, you hit the wall.”

Dan Hardy, who became the first man to go the distance with Johnson in the UFC recalled Rumble’s power in their fight, saying:

“With Anthony Johnson, it’s a very unusual power that he has,” Hardy said. “And it’s not even necessarily power that it feels like; it feels more like weight. His hands – and certainly his leg when he kicked me – feel like it’s made out of lead. It feels very weighty. It’s the same thing with (UFC vet) Paul Daley’s left hook when we used to spar. There was a weight to it. It’s almost like your head was a magnet and it attracted this massive chunk of metal to it.”

on 3/28/2017.