Five ways of looking at UFC Fight Night 32: Hendo’s future, Jason’s wall punch

Dan Henderson

Right off I want to make a promise to you, dear reader, and it goes a little something like this: There will be no mention of testosterone-replacement therapy in this column. After this initial disclaimer, I mean.

I’m sick of the TRT stuff, probably so are you, and anyway there’s so much more to discuss in the aftermath of Saturday night’s UFC Fight Night 32 event. We can’t let one topic cast a shadow over everything else. It’s just not fair to the other fighters.

If you absolutely must read about TRT, go here or here. Otherwise, man, can we please talk about something – anything – else? Starting… now.

1. What’s to become of “Hendo” now?

As you probably heard, this was the last fight on Dan Henderson‘s current contract. In the past Henderson (29-11 MMA, 6-5 UFC) has been pretty good at coming out big in situations like this, but this time he got knocked off his feet by Vitor Belfort (24-10 MMA, 13-6 UFC) and then knocked out for the first time in his 16-year career (though can we please stop saying that Belfort was the first to “stop” Henderson? He got submitted by both Nogueira brothers and Anderson Silva, so, come on). UFC President Dana White expressed interest in discussing a new contract, and Henderson sure isn’t talking like a man who wants to retire, so what do you do with the guy?

On one hand, he’s 43 years old and riding a three-fight losing streak. If he were anyone else, we’d do the math on that and call for his retirement. On the other hand, two of those three losses were very close split decisions, so it’s not as if he’s falling apart in front of our eyes. Henderson says he has at least a couple good years left in him, and I don’t know that I can disagree.

At the same time, can you see him ever fighting for a UFC title? Can you picture him taking a drastic pay cut just to stick around? He still has the potential to put on fun, exciting (with the right dance partner), probably not terribly meaningful fights. The question is, what’s that worth to the UFC right now? I’m not sure, but my gut tells me it won’t be as much as Henderson expects.

2. Is it time to get excited about Thatch yet?

Watching Brandon Thatch (11-1 MMA, 2-0 UFC) drop Paulo Thiago (15-6 MMA, 5-6 UFC) with a perfectly timed knee to the liver was one of those beautiful and terrible moments of violence that MMA can be counted on to deliver. Thatch caught him just right, in the best/worst spot, and Thiago could do nothing but accept the indignity of being forced to tap to strikes. If you’ve ever been hit with a hard body shot, you feel that man’s pain. It’s like someone coming along and scooping your guts out with an old shovel. The instinct to lay down and cry forever is almost overwhelming.

That’s two impressive wins in a row for Thatch, who debuted in the UFC with a “Knockout of the Night” finish over Justin Edwards. Of course it’s also the sixth UFC loss for Thiago, who’s now dropped five of his past seven. The two people he beat? David Mitchell and Michael Prazeres. Sounds like it’s time for Thatch to face tougher competition, and maybe also time for Thiago to start worrying about his future with the UFC.

3. If things get any worse for Jason, he’ll be in a country music song.

Remember what I was just saying about beautiful and terrible moments of violence? Jeremy Stephens‘ head kick of Rony Jason (13-4 MMA, 3-1 UFC) covered the beautiful part, and that follow-up right hand was just plain terrible. I’m not sure how much you can blame Stephens (22-9 MMA, 9-8 UFC) for that extra shot. He’s programmed to go until the ref tells him to stop. I’m also not sure you can put it all on the ref because, damn, it just happened so fast. But apparently Jason’s night hadn’t yet gotten as bad as it possibly could, because he went and punched through a wall backstage, slicing open his arm in the process.

We’ve all been there. I mean, not exactly there, having just been brutally knocked out by “Lil Heathen,” but you know what I mean. Things are bad, you get frustrated, and in a moment of stupid, impotent rage, you somehow manage to make them worse. But while he might not have been eager to go to the hospital to get his arm stitched up just then, maybe it’s for the best after a knockout like that.

4. So when does bending the rules in an MMA fight not pay off?

If you tuned into the online prelims for this card, you likely saw Dustin Ortiz (12-2 MMA, 1-0 UFC) pull off a come-from-behind victory after kicking Jose Maria (33-5 MMA, 0-2 UFC) in the pills twice, then finishing him off in the third with a barrage of punches to the back of the head. It was, to put it mildly, a liberal interpretation of the Unified Rules of MMA. And, as it usually does in MMA, it paid off. Ortiz won a fight he was losing on the scorecards. Sure seems like the fighter most willing to blur the line between legal and illegal also happens to be the fighter most likely to win.

Does that seem ridiculous to anyone else? It’s as if the rules are more of a guideline than anything else. It’s so rare that there are any real consequences for breaking them. Even when there are – when, say, a fighter loses a point for repeated infractions – that can be wiped out with a finish. Even if that finish comes as a result of illegal blows, it’s far more likely to result in a win than a disqualification. Kind of seems like, if you’re a fighter and you’re not forcing the ref to at least warn you once or twice, you aren’t taking full advantage of the system.

5. Ferreira-Sarafian co-main event hints at the regional differences to come in future UFC fight cards.

Maybe in Brazil this really did feel like a fight that absolutely had to happen. Cezar Ferreira (7-2 MMA, 3-0 UFC) and Daniel Sarafian (8-4 MMA, 1-2 UFC) were supposed to meet in the original finale for the first “Ultimate Fighter: Brazil” before an injury forced a little reshuffling, so I can see how the UFC thought there might be unfinished business there. What I can’t see is how this would have been a co-main event bout anywhere else, especially if it’s on the same card with veterans such as Rafael Cavalcante and Stephens.

I’m not necessarily saying it’s a bad thing. The UFC is smart to build fight cards that reflect the interests of the local population. But as the UFC spreads its tentacles into new markets all around the world, seems like that disconnect might become more and more evident between what people in, say, Poland think is a huge fight (probably involving Mariusz Pudzianowski, natch) and what viewers back home in North America are used to seeing. Again, not necessarily a bad thing. It just might require an adjustment of our expectations as the UFC expands across the globe. When in Rome, as they say, give Alessio Sakara a prominent spot on the main card.

For complete coverage of UFC Fight Night 32, stay tuned to the UFC Events section of the site.