Miles Johns left UFC Vegas 109 with half his paycheck and a split decision loss on his record despite truly believing he deserved the nod in his fight against Jean Matsumoto.
A heavy underdog going into the matchup, Johns outperformed what odds makers expected, especially after he set the tone early with a strong opening round. While Matsumoto eventually rebounded, Johns felt fully confident that he had done enough to secure the victory but when the judges’ scorecards were revealed, he was floored
by the result.
“I’m feeling angry, I’m not going to lie,” Johns told MMA Fighting. “There’s a lot of money on the line with these fights. I’ve got four kids. I’ve got mouths to feed. I feel like there’s no room for incompetency from the judges. I’m feeling angry but at the same time I’m feeling hungry, I’m feeling motivated. I am learning from it. There’s still things that I could have done better in the fight. There’s still things that I could have done to make it a more obvious win.
“At the end of the day, you can’t leave it in the hands of the judges. I’m a mix of emotions but not getting your win bonus, it’s just like a stab in the heart. I worked so hard for it. I feel like I truly deserve it and the judges just make a call and the UFC sits there like ‘Jean won’ and there’s absolutely nothing you can do. You’re just stuck with that.”
After returning home, Johns rewatched the fight just to see if there was something missing that he somehow didn’t see previously but instead it only strengthened his believe that he deserved the win.
While Johns gives Matsumoto credit for certain moments during the three-round affair, he still felt that he did more damage and checked more boxes when it comes to the scoring criteria.
“I went back and watched it and I definitely think we won the fight,” Johns said. “I think we won the first round decisively. I think it was a very clear round. On the second round, I think was close. At first I was like for sure give Jean the second round. I’m still like if you want to play devil’s advocate, give him the second round. But the third round, I think I definitely won that round, too.
“I guess they’re looking for damage but that takedown and control, you can see in Jean’s face when I took him down at the end of the third round, that is a quitting [look] like ‘oh I’m losing.’ He tried to get back up, I brought him right back down. 90 seconds of control time. I looked in his eyes and he knew he had lost it at that point. We both knew.”
Johns also took umbrage with former UFC bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz and the way he called the fight at the UFC APEX.
Listening back to the commentary, Johns felt like Cruz was calling the fight for Matsumoto even during the moments when he was clearly getting the better of the exchanges.
“I’ve always had a lot of respect for Dominick Cruz but it’s almost like he had an agenda that night,” Johns said. “That was his agenda and that’s what he was going to see. He was talking over me doing combos and stuff, he’s like ‘Johns is all power, Johns needs to quit loading up.’ At the same exact time that he said that, I threw a two down the pipe that landed clean on Jean’s nose. He threw a right hand and I slipped it and landed another straight right. Like I wasn’t just throwing power in there. I was purposefully just trying to touch him. I was working on the things that I had done in the past that I hadn’t always done correctly.
“So I understand if he’s like at the beginning of the fight, [he says] this is what Johns needs to work on but don’t just harp on the past while something is happening right in front of your eyes.”
Johns also called out Cruz for some of the remarks made during the fight, especially when it came to getting his facts straight.
“He’s the guy that says he does all this research,” Johns said. “He’s called [Daniel] Cormier out and called all these people out for not doing enough research but at the beginning of the fight, I’m winning the first round and he’s like ‘Jean Matsumoto does this though, when he fought Dan Argueta, he put this exact pace on him for two round and then in the third round, the pace is what broke Dan Argueta and he ended up winning the fight.’ Guess what? Him and Dan Argueta didn’t go to a third round.
“That fight ended at the end of the second round. So for a guy who’s called people out, personally called them out on the air for not doing their homework, I mean you better make sure you do your homework because they didn’t go to a third round.”
Ultimately, Johns felt like Cruz was favoring Matsumoto repeatedly in his commentary and refusing to acknowledge the positive results he was producing during the fight.
“Just frustrating hearing him just ride, ride, ride Matsumoto,” Johns said about Cruz. “Almost to the point to where he couldn’t even see what I’m doing. It’s like somebody talking through a movie and you’re like dude, would you be quiet and just watch the movie? Because you’re missing the parts right here.
“I look forward to hearing that commentary and I’m very extreme ownership, no excuses. I go back and hear that commentary and literally work on what they’re telling me. Every time I’m getting ready to fight, I’m like I want to do this because I want the commentators to say ‘he’s improved.’ I was doing that! D.C. was giving me credit and Din Thomas came in and gave me a ton of credit. So then they kind of switched the tune from there but then went right back [to Dominick Cruz]. It’s frustrating.”
As disappointing as it was to hear Cruz’s commentary, Johns admits his real ire only lies with the judges who he believes robbed him of a victory.
UFC CEO Dana White always says never leave a fight in the hands of the judges but Johns wishes the officials in charge of scoring could at least be trusted in those moments when a finish just isn’t possible. Now he sits on two losses in a row but worst of all, Johns left Las Vegas with half his pay and there’s no amount of understanding when it comes to that.
“You want to have some trust in them,” Johns said about the judges. “Just like the justice system. If you don’t trust your justice system, there’s no nation. You’ve got to be able to trust the justice system. You don’t want to leave it in their hands but you want to be able to trust them to know that they’re going to at least do their job and do it with some form of professionalism and the understanding.
“I could handle the loss if it was just a decision, it’s all good. The fact that I’m getting half my check is just a stab in the heart. Immediately when you saw my emotions in the cage, it was immediate understand ‘damn, we did not do it, damn we’re only coming home with half our check. Damn, this changes my life for months until I fight again.’ That’s just a true stab in the heart and there’s nothing you can do about it. I really wish that was changed.”
