Sometimes, Johnny Eblen must wonder what he must do to gain the recognition his skills suggest he deserves. He thrashed highly regarded veteran Gegard Mousasi at Bellator 282 on June 24, 2022, to win the Bellator middleweight title, winning 50-45 on all judges' cards in what was an eye-opening performance.
He made successful defenses of Anatoly Tokov and Fabian Edwards, and takes a 14-0 record into his Feb. 24 bout in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on the Professional Fighters League's "PFL versus Bellator" pay-per-view, when he takes on PFL light heavyweight champion Impa Kasanganay.
Eblen has the respect of those within the MMA community, and former UFC middleweight champion Sean Strickland spoke highly of him after they trained together recently.
"Johnny Eblen is f*cking bad-ass, man," Strickland said.
Eblen, though, doesn't have a high-profile outside of the most hard-core portion of the sport's fan base, and it's probably a reason why he's not in any of the major pound-for-pound lists. ESPN compiles a pound-for-pound Top 10, and 17 fighters got votes. Eblen was not one of them. MMA Junkie has 18 fighters on its pound-for-pound list and Eblen isn't one of them. And MMA Fighting ranks 21 fighters and Eblen isn't among them.
Eblen may well be the best fighter the wider world has yet to learn about.
The criticism of Eblen, who has six TKOs and a submission among his 14 pro wins, is that he's not the most exciting fighter in the world. He pushes back against that thinking, however.
"I feel my fights have been exciting," he told KevinIole.com. " ... And I think my fights are going to get more-and-more exciting as I get more experienced."
Eblen wasn't planning to fight after he left the University of Missouri, where he wrestled from 2012 through 2015. He moved to Florida to take a job and ran into Steve Mocco, a highly decorated collegiate wrestler at Iowa who was coaching wrestling at American Top Team. Mocco convinced Eblen to give MMA a try and the rest is history.
Eblen is clearly among the best middleweights in the world, and he's being paid like it. It's odd, though, not to receive the public acclaim given his lengthy winning streak. He also can't prove he's the best because the UFC, which features elite middleweights like champion Dricus Du Plessis, Strickland and Israel Adesanya, doesn't cross-promote. He has five fights left on his PFL deal and so likely won't get to compete against any of those stars any time soon.
"Sometimes it's frustrating [to not receive public acclaim], but I will say I'm getting paid pretty damn well in my current situation," Eblen said. "I'm not upset. But I will say that sometimes, the idea enters my mind that I'm like, 'Damn. Maybe I am the best in the world but I can't really know because I'm not fighting everybody.' Technically, most people would put the UFC middleweight title at the top pedestal so it's just like, 'F*ck! I treally don't know [if I'm the best] and it's frustrating.
"For some reason, I don't get the credit I deserve in a sense, but it is what it is. It's just a topic that gets brought up and it goes through my mind. I just take it day-by-day and try to become the best fighter I can be and let the chips fall where they may."
Eblen needs to leave Saudi Arabia with a win over Kasanganay to keep his hopes alive of joining that elite group. He's versatile enough, he said, to deal with whatever Kasanganay bring when they fight.
Eblen praised Kasanganay's boxing and said he's good at getting up if he's taken down. Eblen, though, believes he has the all-around skillset to take the fight.
"I'll go wherever the fight takes me," Eblen said. "I think I can out-strike him. I can out-grapple him, out-wrestle him. I'm better than him in every facet of the game, I think. It's just a matter of being smart and having a high fight IQ when I go in there and take the fight where I feel I need to take the fight depending upon the circumstances and how the fight unfolds."
He's a competitor and he wants to win his fight. While he said there is no real rivalry and fighters don't necessarily feel promotional pride, he said the Bellator fighters were talking back-stage at a news conference on Wedesday about having fun with the experience.
Fighters are closer to their teammates than their promotional mates, many of whom are rivals. But still, the champion versus champion format the PFL decided upon for this show is a good gimmick that could generate fan interest.
"We're all fighters at the end of the day and we all get along right now," Eblen said. "There's no real bad blood unless there's a specific issue between two people. For me, I don't really feel like there's camaraderie [with others in the promotion] or like a battle between Bellator and PFL, but they're trying to draw that out in us.
"I am kind of interested in seeing who wins more out of the Bellator versus PFL fights. When they matched us up like this, I am a little bit interested in seeing who wins more."
Courtesy PFL
Bellator middleweight champion Johnny Eblen is 14-0 with seven finishes in his MMA career.