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Charlie Brenneman explains what it felt like getting knocked out by 'Rumble' Johnson

Published Mar. 28, 2017 3:12 p.m. ET

Jonathan Bradley

By now, everyone knows that light heavyweight title contender Anthony Johnson formerly fought at welterweight. That doesn’t make it any less ridiculous, however.

Johnson easily has the most dangerous hands in the 205-pound division, so the thought of him unleashing his fury on the 170-pound division is scary. But that’s exactly what he did during the early part of his UFC career, and one man who felt that power firsthand, Charlie Brenneman, says fighting “Rumble” was literally more painful than he expected it to be.

“I was underneath him and I remember for the first time in my fighting life, thinking, ‘Ouch,’” Brenneman told UFC.com’s Thomas Gerbasi. “He was coming from a weird angle, but punching me. And I just remember feeling the impact and thinking, ‘This is not a normal fight with a normal guy.’ And I felt it immediately. I was saying, ‘Ouch’ in my head, and anyone who fights knows that you don’t usually think that or feel that. It’s more like just a thud, thud, thud. But when I was underneath, I thought this is a different one.”

“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 said. “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.”

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