DaMarques Johnson — Flying Under the Radar

DaMarques Johnson is tired of waiting. He just wants to fight already.

Coming off a loss to James Wilks this past summer at The Ultimate Fighter 9 Finale, DaMarques Johnson is looking to step it up and win impressively this weekend at UFC 107.

The 27-year-old has recently begun training with famed boxing coach, Matt Peña to sharpen up his stand up.
“I’ve been spending a lot of time with Matt Peña,” said Johnson. “He’s Spencer Fisher’s boxing coach. He’s helped out Rich [Franklin] a lot. He’s definitely refined and polished up some of my skills.”

Though he wouldn’t divuldge too much of his game plan, DaMarques did explain that he feels like this will be an exciting fight.

Both Garcia and Johnson are stand up fighters that like to give the audience a show and know how to keep the momentum up. Nearly 40 percent of Johnson’s wins are via (T)KO, and all but one of those was in the first round.

“I think it’s going to be a good fight,” Johnson said. “I think me and Edgar, our styles and personalities, definitely could lead to a Fight of the Night.”

Johnson continued to shed some light on his game plan, that’s really to not have a game plan.

“I think everybody gets caught up in the details,” he said. “I’ve feel victim to this myself, just almost over thinking everything and then you end up doing nothing, which is just as bad as anything else. So I’m just going to go out there and fight and whatever happens in the fight happens.”

The non-chalauntness of Johnson’s attitude is nothing new, he’s always very laid back and relaxed. However, he’s been in training camp for close to three months — almost twice the length of a normal training camp.

Johnson was originally slated to face Peter Sobotta at UFC 105, but due to a commitment with his military status, Sobotta had to pull out of that fight.

After the cancellation Johnson was paired against Edgar Garcia for UFC 107, four weeks after the Sobotta fight was supposed to take place. Instead of taking a break from training Johnson kept his two-a-day routine and focused on gaining more muscle to help him over-power his new opponent.

“You have this big emotional dump because you don’t have a fight and you’re ready to go,” Johnson said of his time waiting for his next opponent to be determined. “Now it’s just kind of turned into ‘Let’s just go. I’m over waiting.’ It’s like the bully telling you you’re going to get beat up at the beginning of the day and you have to wait ‘til the end of the day- the anticipation sucks ass.”

For the man without a plan, the long wait is almost over.