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MMA

01st Aug 2018

Demetrious Johnson’s opportunistic prank was lost on just about everyone

How did nobody cop this?

Ben Kiely

Demetrious Johnson

It shouldn’t take a genius to tell the difference between Demetrious Johnson and TJ Dillashaw.

Not only do Demetrious Johnson and TJ Dillashaw not look alike, they don’t sound alike either. However, when the bantamweight king remained silent on the UFC 227 conference call, the P4P great chimed in.

“Good afternoon everyone. I apologise in advance if my signal’s not coming through great. First question’s for TJ Dillashaw, the champion. Are you disappointed at all your first title defence is an immediate rematch with Cody Garbrandt?”

Six seconds of silence followed before he tried again. ‘TJ? Can you hear me?’ Fed up waiting, a familiar voice offered a response. Johnson, who was on the line to promote his title defence against Henry Cejudo on the same card, spoke on behalf of Dillashaw.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m here. Sorry, sorry, sorry, I’m here. Yeah, you know, I think I did a good job, you know,  the first time in Madison Square Garden taking out Cody, you know. But he’s the number one contender and I’m ready to go out there and give it to him, man.”

Ah lads!

Remarkably, the reporter didn’t recognise the voice belonged to undisputed flyweight champion rather than the bantamweight king. So he asked him another question.

“But TJ, do you believe if you were to lose this title that Cody would grant you like a rematch or trilogy fight considering what you had to do in order to get another shot at the title yourself considering you lost the belt in a very controversial split decision that was a very close fight?”

Again, ‘Mighty Mouse’ was the first to respond.

“Absolutely, man. Absolutely. I think Cody’s a man of his word. I think he’s going to give me that rematch regardless if I win or lose and I’m just ready to go out there and do my thing.”

The dude still had more questions for who he thought he was Dillashaw.

“Now, earlier this week, Cody said a lot of things that you made a lot of excuses to delay this fight from happening…”

At this point, DJ realised the joke was being lost on everyone. ‘No, no, no, I’ve got to stop this. You were not paying attention. This is actually Demetrious Johnson.”

Check out the funny moment in the video embedded below. The fun starts at around the 1:08 mark.