UFC commentator Jon Anik fondly remembers his dearly departed friend, Anthony “Rumble” Johnson, who passed away on November 13 this year. Anik shared his thoughts on an “unquantifiable loss for the MMA community” in an interview with MMAFighting.
“I was just like, ‘No, this can’t be true.’ He had acknowledged that it was scary what he was dealing with however many months ago publicly, and yet it seemed like one of the diseases he had wasn’t necessarily fatal, but that didn’t dovetail how scared this larger than life individual Anthony Johnson was. I was always scared that he was scared.
Jon Anik Remembers “Rumble” Johnson
This just felt like a whole crashing down of everything that happened the night prior with Alex Pereira, and it just brought everything back down to earth.
I used to say before Francis Ngannou that this was the biggest power threat in UFC history and he will always be on Francis’ heels right there for me, and that’s a big part of his UFC legacy just how frightening of an individual he was to fight, yet that flies into the face of everything he was as a human being. He was just so gentle and gracious with everybody.”
Anik reminisced about shared moments with Johnson, and how he and fellow commentator Daniel Cormier found out about the news.
“I’ll never forget being at the Patriots Super Bowl against the Rams and I posted a picture of me and my twin brother, and he reached out and was like, ‘That’s crazy that there are two of you.’ And I was like, ‘Dude, imagine if there were two ‘Rumbles’.’ As I said on my podcast this week, I can’t believe we have no ‘Rumbles’ in a physical sense.
It’s just an unquantifiable loss for the MMA community and it’s just really, really, really sad.
I was with [Daniel Cormier] five minutes before the news broke, and can you imagine what it was like for him? They’re forever linked and my heart goes out to the Blackzilian family and everyone that knew Rumble even better than I did.”
Ultimately, Anik remembers Johnson as a kind, gracious, respectful man and a credit to the sport.
“At UFC 142, January 2012, Jan. 14, I’ll never forget because six days later I called my first ever UFC show in Nashville, but the first official event I worked for the UFC was UFC 142 when he fought Vitor Belfort.
He gave me time after the loss, and if you remember there was all of the weight issues, the fight ended up at 197 pounds, or whatever it was, but I just always enjoyed being in that man’s presence.”
