San Jose, CA – Streaks are nothing new to Bellator heavyweight Tim Johnson where he attempts to break a two-fight losing skid when he faces Linton Vassell at Bellator 277 on April 15th at the SAP Center.
Speaking to reporters at media day on Wednesday Johnson elaborated to the winning and losing streaks he’s gone on in his career.
“I haven’t been Mr. Consistency in my fight career so to speak. Once I got to the UFC it was win one, lose one, win one, lose one. Then lose two, win three in a row, then lose two. Now I should be on a streak and go in and win three in a row again, right,” Johnson said.
Johnson is coming off a knockout loss to Fedor Emelianenko in October at Bellator 269 in Moscow. Johnson seemed to be content to test his striking against Fedor, but found himself on the losing end of that bout.
“Definitely got some regrets there. I think we had a pretty good game plan against Fedor the only problem was it wasn’t an exciting….it wasn’t the road the path that my coaches and myself wanted to take. I definitely deviated from it. Not to say things would have ended up differently, but I’m not a knockout artist. Fedor is and when I made the decision to go ‘Well let’s see who hits each other first’….well his hand speed is a lot better than mine and he definitely hit me first,” Johnson said with a smile.
Now heading into Bellator 277 against Vassell on Friday, Johnson expressed the belief that he can get the job done.
“I’ve put in a lot of work this camp. Different type of work. My last few camps I kind of got away from sparring. This time I actually upped my sparring a lot more. Sparring four times a week instead of two times a week. Just getting a lot of rounds in and just kind of putting in the work,” Johnson said.
The lead up to this bout was actually quite amicable between the two heavyweights.
“Me and Linton communicated to each other. At the time he just came off the Tyrell fight and I was searching for a fight. We kind of talked back and forth a little bit and I’m like ‘Hey man this fight makes sense for both of us’. He gets a win over me it puts him right in line where he wants to be. If I get a win over him it puts me right back in line where I want to be. So I think for both of us, career-wise, this fight makes the most sense,” Johnson said.
Johnson added that he preferred to fight a cordial opponent such as Vassell over less respectful opponents.
“I’d rather fight someone who’s a good sport than someone who’s a jackass any day of the week.”
Watch the rest of Tim Johnson’s media day scrum above. Bellator 277 goes down April 15th in San Jose, CA on Showtime.
