That was one large belt Demetrious Johnson won when he defeated Danny Kingad via unanimous decision at ONE Championship 100: Century last month in Japan, a victory that crowned him king of the promotion’s flyweight grand prix tournament.

The strap was so big, in fact, that “Mighty Mouse” jokingly pretended he was about to topple over when the belt was placed around his shoulder after he was announced the winner. And while the oversized title was a just reward for navigating his way through a field in which he won three fights, it presented a logistical problem: How was he going to get that thing home to the Seattle area from Tokyo?

Leaving it with the ONE office wasn’t an option. DJ didn’t go through all that work just to have his prize end up elsewhere. But that meant he had to lug the thing along on his long flight back to the U.S.

Needless to say, when he arrived home, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials had a few questions.

“Yeah, I got stopped,” Johnson told MMA Junkie on Wednesday. “You can’t bring something like that through and not expect them to be curious. They were like, ‘What is that?’ And I’m like, ‘a belt.’ And then they were like, ‘Where did you get that?’ And I’m like, ‘in Asia.’ And then I guess they weren’t MMA fans, so I had to explain the whole deal with it.

“Not too many people pull through customs with huge title belts. So it took a while, but once I explained it they were cool.”

In all seriousness, though, Johnson says the belt has special meaning. He was a well-decorated fighter even before he joined ONE in a historic trade that sent Ben Askren to the UFC last year.

Johnson had a legendary run as UFC flyweight champion, setting the record for most successful title defenses in a UFC reign with 11 and holding the belt for nearly six years before dropping a razor-thin split decision to Henry Cejudo at UFC 227 to lose the title. 

Johnson even, at one point, had a picture taken with 10 belts, representing what, at that point, was 10 victories in UFC title fights. But Johnson says the supersized ONE title is the favorite trophy in his collection, and that he’s having a special mantle made for the new house he and his family are about to move into. 

“This is my favorite one, man,” Johnson said. “This one means the most to me. Years ago I was a huge fan of PRIDE, and you’d see the belts guys like Mirko Cro Cop got when they won their grand prix tournaments. That was a special deal. So to go over to Japan with their history for tournaments and add my name to the list of people who have won tournaments and get the belt, yeah, that makes this one real special for me.” 

These days, Johnson is as well known in the gaming community as he is in the MMA world, and as an influencer, he’ll be a special guest at the PUBG Global Championship on Nov. 23-24 at Oakland Arena (formerly Oracle Arena) in Oakland, Calif. 

Thirty-two teams from around the world will converge to compete for a prize pool of $3 million, in a game which, according to promotional material, “in each match, 100 players are dropped onto a map where they find weapons, armor and other gear and then compete against each other to be the sole survivor of the match.” The PUBG grand finals will stream live over Twitch at 8 p.m. ET each night.

“This is basically the Super Bowl of PUBG,” Johnson said. “This is where all the best players in the world will come together, and I’m excited to be a part of it. I know there’s a lot of crossover between MMA fans and gamers, and they’ll be tuning in, but if you’ve been curious what this whole thing is all about, this is the best time to drop in and check it out.” 

The Blue Corner is MMA Junkie’s blog space. We don’t take it overly serious, and neither should you. If you come complaining to us that something you read here is not hard-hitting news, expect to have the previous sentence repeated in ALL CAPS.