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As the big-time athletes continue to filter into mixed martial arts, some veterans getting wake up calls. Lavar Johnson got his in the first 30 seconds of the fight from former LSU fullback Shawn Jordan. A monstrous left blasted him around his right eye, he pawed at it and knew he was in for a dogfight.
The 26-year-old Jordan (12-3) surprised the hard-hitting Johnson with his chin, wrestling and power to pull the upset via stoppage (key lock) at 3:08 of the second round. Johnson, who was part of the alternate bouts in the Strikeforce heavyweight Grand Prix, was a minus-270 favorite entering tonight's tilt.
Jordan was a member of the 2007 national championship team at LSU. It looks like he's got a bright future in MMA.
"[Fighting] is an entirely separate entity. It's great. I love it," Jordan said when asked to compare MMA to football. "It's a different type of competition, just me."
He's an athletic 5-foot-11 and 248 pounds. Seconds after a rough fight, he pulled off two successful standing back flips to celebrate the victory. Jordan was a big-time high school recruit out of El Paso, Tx. back in 2003. The No. 7 rated fullback in the country, he turned down Stanford, UCLA and Oklahoma State to go play for Nick Saban.
Johnson, also former college football player, is massive but Jordan walked right through the knockout artist's shots and dumped him like a sack of potatoes when they locked up.
On the ground, Jordan was heavy and wore Johnson down. By the middle of the second, Johnson (15-5) was struggling with badly with a swelled right eye and didn't pay attention to his right arm. Jordan grabbed it, got into position and pushed forward with all his weight. Johnson had to tap before his shoulder was shredded.
As the ring announcer shouted the results, you could hear Johnson tell Jordan that he never expected that early left hook that changed the fight. He said he was looking for the right from the southpaw.
Jordan, now working with Greg Jackson's MMA gym in Albuquerque needs to work on his standup, but he's definitely got a granite chin. Johnson drilled him with a left and an uppercut to start the second and Jordan just smiled. Johnson has 13 KO's victories in 21 fights.