Chris Johnson Vs Mercer

VS

A hippie at heart, Nate Mercer isn't generally know for his ferocity, but get him riled up enough and he will fought. Case in point: the Barnes VS Mercer fight. All that was needed was Jody as the catalyst. But in this fight against newcomer Chris Johnson, elder brother to the "The Kid," such a catalyst was not needed. Was it the inner fighter coming out of Nate Mercer? Who knows? Both fighters fought well in this fight. 

The fight got kicked off with the touch of gloves and a walk around the ring by the sexy and oh-so-excited Sarah Mabe. As soon as the first punch was thrown though, the crowd was yelling. When asked of the complaint they responded, "We haven't had a ring girl yet." Apparently they didn't notice Sarah while they were in their drunken stupor. 

After the delay, the fight was back on. The first round was fairly uneventful. Mercer would keep on his toes dancing looking for an opportunity here and there to strike Johnson. Johnson meanwhile would stay his distance in a defensive pose. When Mercer would throw his wide hooks and jabs, Johnson would either block them or just fall back and avoid them all together. This strategy continued on until the first round was over. 

In the second round Johnson stepped up his offensive role and pursue Mercer more. This caught Mercer off guard as he tend to use a wide hook and jab strategy that required his opponent to be farther away from him. Johnson would be able to get in between Mercer's wide arms and attack from the inside leaving Mercer to push his opponent away so that he wouldn't be pounded in the head. Mercer would be lucky that he had the reach over his opponent otherwise he would have faced a lot more heavy blows. Johnson would keep up the the aggression despite the reach disadvantage and at the same time he was pretty quick to dodge. Notice right here where he's able to duck a wide hook by Mercer as he's approaching him.

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But soon after this Johnson made the fatal mistake of stepping down the offense and as such he became a easy-to-hit target with Mercer's wide hooks:

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Johnson would take a moment to get back up, but it wouldn't look much better for him in the rest of the second round. He took a hard hit to the body right after he got up and he started to slow down which allowed Mercer to make more contact with his wide hooks and jabs. Luckily for Johnson the round was over within a few seconds so he could recuperate from the recent knockdown and loss of stamina.

 After a somewhat long rest, round 3 was kicked off. Early into the round Mercer made contact with Johnson's face using another one of his wide jabs. It appeared as if the tides were turning against Johnson, but he was determined not to let it happen. Soon after this he managed to regained so of the quickness he showed us in the 2nd round. This allowed him to get a hard body blow on Mercer which left him momentarily winded. Johnson seemed determined not to let Mercer hit him like he did before. Keeping up his evasiveness, he was able to avoid the rest of Mercer's wide swings for the most part. Since Mercer had the reach over Johnson he still make contact with those swings, but Johnson's evasiveness relocated the fists to his shoulders instead of his face. It appeared as if the shoulder hits were starting to take a toll on Johnson, but it would be too little too late for Mercer to make any significant gains as the rounded ended soon after that.