There isn’t much that Dan Henderson hasn’t accomplished in the sport of MMA. So far, the only thing that’s eluded him is an undisputed UFC title.
On Saturday, he’ll try to check that box when he rematches middleweight champ Michael Bisping in the pay-per-view headliner of UFC 204 at Manchester Arena in Manchester, England.
Because his career is supposedly coming to a close after Bisping (29-7 MMA, 19-7 UFC), Henderson (32-14 MMA, 9-8 UFC) frequently gets asked about the opponent who got away after a decade-plus of middleweight, light-heavyweight and even heavyweight fights.
For him, that’s Jon Jones (22-1 MMA, 16-1 UFC).
“I trained to fight him, and I was ready to fight him,” Henderson said during a media Q&A covered by our partners at Champions.co. “I got hurt, and I didn’t get a chance to really test myself against him. That would have been a fun moment for me to see how I do.”
Instead, it ended up being one of Henderson’s career lowlights. Set to face then-light heavyweight champ Jones in a pay-per-view headliner at UFC 151 in 2012, he suffered a torn MCL in the middle of training camp. His withdrawal from the event ultimately led to the cancellation of the card – a first for the UFC at the time – when Jones refused a short-notice bout with Chael Sonnen.
Henderson’s title prospects dimmed considerably after his withdrawal. The ill-fated title shot foreshadowed a serious career downturn that saw him lose five of his next six bouts, turning up the volume on questions of retirement.
Jones, meanwhile, continued to dominate at light heavyweight until a cataclysmic series of events inside and outside the cage brought his reign as champion to an end.
“(Jones) has since then done even better – he’s screwed up a lot more, too,” said Henderson, referring to the hit-and-run accident and failed drug test that have left Jones without a belt and facing a long potential layoff. “He is still arguably one of the best pound-for-pound guys out there.”
Henderson, the No. 14 fighter in the USA TODAY Sports/MMAjunkie MMA middleweight rankings, deserves a place in that conversation, no thanks to the incredible turnaround he’s pulled off in his past three bouts. Knockouts of Tim Boetsch and Hector Lombard prompted the UFC to give him an improbable third UFC title shot after failed attempts in 2007 and 2008.
Three years after the ill-fated UFC 151 bout, so much has changed in the MMA world. But in MMA, second chances are never far away when there’s money to be made.
Should Henderson win the title from No. 1-ranked Bisping and Jones get cleared to fight, would he put off retirement and take that challenge?
“No – no,” Henderson said of the now interim champ, who remains the No. 1-ranked light heavyweight despite his troubles. “No, I mean, over the years, it’s gotten harder to keep my body in the shape I need to, and I think that’s why I gravitated back down to middleweight. It’s hard to go against the heavier guys, and having (Daniel Cormier’s) fat ass on top of me didn’t help.”
That was when Henderson, a usually dominant physical presence in the octagon, found himself tossed around the cage like a rag doll by current light heavyweight champ Cormier (18-1 MMA, 6-1 UFC) in a 2014 meeting at UFC 173.
Now 46, Henderson isn’t climbing those mountains anymore.
“I was already thinking about (moving back down to middleweight) at that point,” he said. “When he was on top of me, I needed to decide to go back down in weight, for sure.”
Check out the clip above or the full interview below.
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