Fighter to Watch at UFC Vegas 47: Miles Johns
Entering on a two-fight winning streak, Fortis MMA bantamweight looks to take another step forward in the load division with a win over John Castaneda on Saturday
Name: Miles Johns
Nickname: Chapo
Record: 12-1 overall, 3-1 UFC
Division: Bantamweight
Team: Fortis MMA
Opponent: John Castaneda (18-5 overall, 1-1 UFC)
Bantamweight is my favourite division in the UFC at the moment.
If you’ve been reading this newsletter for any length of time, you already know that, and are probably getting sick of me talking about it already, but that’s not going to happen. The 135-pound weight class is too perfectly situated to remain exciting and lively for the next couple years that you should really prepare yourself for a continuous diet of me nattering on about different competitors from within the division all year long, with no real finish line in sight.
One fighter that is a little further down the ranks that I’m particularly high on is Miles Johns, the Fortis MMA product who returns to action this weekend against John Castaneda, looking to build on his consecutive third-round stoppage wins.
A member of the DWCS class of ‘19, it’s surprising to me that the 27-year-old has received more attention or recognition to this point in his UFC journey given that [a] he comes from a great team, [b] he was a standout during his time on the regional circuit, and [c] he holds a win over rising star Adrian Yanez, who similarly graduated from the Contender Series, but has become one of the darlings of the division and a media favourite thanks to a string of finishes and more high-profile opportunities.
Part of the reason (I think) he’s been a little under-the-radar to this point is that Johns’ debut win was a narrow, split decision victory over Cole Smith on the last card out here in Vancouver, which came the week after UFC 242 (Khabib vs. Poirier) and was viewed as a top-heavy event. In his next appearance, Johns ate a flying knee and got finished by Mario Bautista in an undercard fight at UFC 247, which stopped what little momentum he had dead.
Since then, however, “Chapo” has looked far more comfortable inside the Octagon, collecting consecutive third-round stoppage wins over Kevin Natividad and Anderson dos Santos, each of which earned him a Performance of the Night bonus. Both were the kind of wins that don’t really register with the wider populous because they were preliminary card assignments against unheralded opponents, but they’re the kind of efforts I tend to pay close attention to because it’s in those spots where you can see whether a fighter has what it takes to hang at this level or not, and Johns has shown that he does.
Dos Santos is one of those dangerous veteran guys that can catch you if you’re not careful, and Johns took him out of the fight pretty early on, punishing his lead leg and landing at an insane clip through the first two rounds before putting him away in the third. It was Johns at his best and felt like a harbinger of things to come for Kansas native.
Saturday’s matchup with Castaneda was a little surprising to me when it first came together, simply because Johns has earned two straight finishes and is 3-1 in the Octagon, while Castaneda is just 1-1, but now feels like a “let me see it one more time” type of deal where a victory will earn him a bump up the competitive ladder.
Castaneda is the more experienced of the two, and Johns will be operating at a not insignificant five-inch reach deficit, though the 30-year-old “Sexi Mexi” has been the infinitely more hittable of the two thus far in their UFC careers. The majority of that comes from his debut loss to Nathaniel Wood, who landed 131 significant strikes over 15 minutes, but that also feels like a somewhat replicable blueprint for Johns to follow on Saturday — start quickly, set the tone, and press the pace, similar to what he did against dos Santos.
There are a smattering of bantamweight fights on tap this month, but things don’t really start getting interesting and important until March and April, when some of the fighters with numbers next to their names return to action, so this is a very good opportunity for Johns to take another positive step forward and hope to cement his position in the collection of emerging talents assembling in that second tier in the 135-pound weight class.
This is no easy fight, by any means, but with as good as he’s looked of late, his tremendous pedigree, and having “The General” Sayif Saud by his side, Saturday is as good an opportunity as any for Johns to establish himself as a fighter to watch going forward.