In this week’s Trading Shots, MMAjunkie columnist Ben Fowlkes and retired UFC/WEC fighter Danny Downes grapple with the long, complicated legacy of Dan Henderson in light of his first-round TKO victory over Tim Boetsch at UFC Fight Night 68.
Downes: Ben, while you were enjoying the indie rock styling of Neutral Milk Hotel last night, Dan Henderson came out like a Ferris Wheel on Fire. Live from the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans, the 44-year-old only needed 28 seconds to blast through Tim Boetsch.
Even though we keep trying to write him off, it seems like Hendo has no plans on hanging up his gloves any time soon. I’m not sure where to place Henderson in the current middleweight picture, but what about the larger one? When he decides to retire (whenever that is) what should we think about his career?
Fowlkes: That’s an interesting question, especially since, in a weird way, there are still some aspects of his career that seem yet to be determined even after all these years. As you’ll no doubt recall, Hendo was kind of Patient Zero on this whole testosterone-replacement therapy thing. He got on it in 2007, before the initials TRT had even entered the MMA lexicon.
He also had some of the best moments of his career – knocking out Michael Bisping and Fedor Emelianenko, going to war with Mauricio Rua – after getting a little chemical help. So how are we supposed to know whether it was him or the juice that launched all those H-bombs?
One answer, I guess, is in what we see from him now that he’s no longer allowed to use it. Against Boetsch, he showed up looking pretty much exactly like he always has (not something you can say for other former TRT patients like Vitor Belfort), and he threw those hammers like he was still just a spry young man in his late 30s. If he can keep doing that for a little while longer, would it be enough to convince you that the TRT wasn’t a difference-maker in his already prolific career? And how many Tim Boetsches would he have to knock out to make that case?
Downes: I don’t think there’s anything he could do to convince me. Henderson could boycott protein drinks for the rest of his life and it still wouldn’t change the fact he used TRT. He’s already done it and reaped the benefits. He may not have looked like an action figure, like some of the other users, but is that really the lengths you’ll go to justify it? How could we hold it against the guy? He didn’t even get the cover of Muscle and Fitness!
Any strength and conditioning coach can tell you that there are beach muscles and functional muscles. Yes, sometimes those two may dovetail into one another, but that’s not always the case. The aesthetics of Henderson’s body have nothing to do with the benefits of his TRT usage.
How come we never hear people make excuses for other PED users? Stephan Bonnar got run out of the UFC (including commentary gigs) because of his failed test, and all he wanted was to look good in those photo shoots on the beach. Do we give Henderson a pass because Toby Keith’s “Made in America” plays in our heads every time he walks by? If he were walking around in Armani suits with a cool mohawk, something tells me people would be a little less forgiving.
Then again, maybe I’m being too harsh. Even armed robbers are allowed to pay their debt to society and have the slate wiped clean. Why should I hold something against a fighter forever?
I’ll tell you why. Because you can’t un-ring that bell. Wins accomplished through cheating or gaming the system or other abuses shouldn’t count as wins. This isn’t like he grabbed the fence to prevent a takedown, and then got a knockout. It was a purposeful choice made on multiple occasions. And we’re supposed to ignore that because his six-pack wasn’t as defined as other guys’? What about Michael Bisping? If he doesn’t run into PED users, who’s to say he wouldn’t have gotten the title shot he’s always wanted? We can applaud what Henderson did last night, but that doesn’t mean it negates what happened in the past.
Fowlkes: I won’t argue that there’s anything Henderson – or any other TRT user – can do to “negate” the past, but I do think the opportunity still exists for them to put the past in a new perspective.
Take Belfort, for instance. He showed up for his title fight against Chris Weidman at UFC 187 looking more dad bod than beach bod, and that gave us faith that he really had cleaned up his act. If he’d knocked Weidman out in the first round, just as he’d done to all those poor souls he fought while on TRT, I think it would have bolstered his case that the TRT had been more of a hormonal aid than a cure-all fountain of youth.
Of course, that didn’t happen. Instead he looked scary for about 30 seconds, then got taken down and smashed by Weidman. Which, unfortunately for Belfort, sort of shapes the narrative in the other direction.
Point is, the TRT era was such a bizarre part of our very recent MMA history, and I don’t think the book is totally closed on it. We’re still deciding what to make of all those great performances we saw from TRT-infused athletes (looking at you, “Bigfoot” Silva), and the ongoing saga of Old Man Henderson is going to play a big role in that.
The flip side is, say Hendo does keep fighting for a few more years, as crazy as that sounds. I can’t suspend so much disbelief as to imagine him fighting for a UFC title, but I can picture him winning just enough to stick around, notching a few more knockout victims in the process. Will that prove that there was more to his late-career surge than TRT, or will it just prove that he never really needed it in the first place? Because, come on, if he was really suffering from naturally occurring low testosterone, how could he keep cold-clocking fools into his mid-40s?
Downes: Oh, so you’re not trying to whitewash the past, you’re just looking to “put the past in a new perspective.” That’s some high-level sophistry, Ben. I’m sure MMAjunkie is really going to miss you when you take your new position as the curator of the Richard Nixon Library. What you call changing perspective, I call faulty reasoning. The past does not dictate future results, and the present doesn’t rewrite the past.
Belfort looked a lot different in his last fight, I’ll give you that. Both physically and as a fighter, he was not as impressive as we had seen him previously. Bearing that in mind, it makes sense that people would draw the conclusion that he really needed a TRT bump. Belfort’s results, though, are totally independent of Henderson’s.
Because Belfort lost and Hendo won, it doesn’t make one more or less of a PED user than the other. Belfort also fought the best middleweight fighter in the world, while Henderson fought a man with known defensive gaps. Are you comfortable applying the same stipulations you placed on Henderson to Belfort? Let’s say the “Young Dinosaur” goes out there (dad bod and all) and KOs his next three opponents. Will you be ready to say, “Hey, I guess it wasn’t that big of a difference”?
I understand why it might be uncomfortable to place the scarlet letter on all TRT users. We want to give people the benefit of the doubt. We love giving second and third chances. The idea of writing off someone’s accomplishments forever seems unfair. Just because something’s uncomfortable, though, it doesn’t mean it isn’t true. It shouldn’t matter if someone’s made in America or made in Rio, the same metric should be applied to both. It doesn’t matter if they needed it or not – they used it. Usain Bolt doesn’t need to cheat to beat either one of us in a footrace. But if he still gives himself a head start, he’s cheating.
Fowlkes: You want this to be simpler than it really is. You want to be able to check a box that says “TRT user,” and have that mean the same thing as “known cheater.” Whatever we think of TRT, we have to admit that, for a bafflingly long time, it was legal in MMA. Guys like Henderson asked for and received permission to use it. What started to make the whole thing seem even more ridiculous was when guys like Belfort, who had been caught using steroids in the past, also got permission to use it.
I don’t think TRT ever should have been legal, but I also don’t think it’s completely fair to call a guy a cheater if he never, as far as we know, broke any rules. It’s not like Belfort, who was caught doping before, and who only later sought permission to address a supposed problem that can potentially be caused by the very type of doping he had previously subjected himself to. If Henderson only did TRT after the powers that be told him he could, and if he stopped when they told him he couldn’t, how much can we really hold that against him?
The problem is, that still doesn’t tell us what to think of his career in general. I know you have a problem incorporating new information into your understanding of the unchangeable past, Danny, but the truth is that our perceptions of different fighters are subject to change. That’s why some fighters can go from hero to hated with one failed drug test. It’s why we can look back with a more sympathetic eye on the careers of guys like Bisping, who suffered more than one TRT-fueled setback.
Knocking out Boetsch doesn’t necessarily prove anything new about Henderson. We always knew that he had a hard right hand, and Boetsch just reminded us what a terrible idea it is to walk into that thing. But if we’re going to view a fighter’s past accomplishments a certain way because of what substances he was on, it seems only fair to apply that same scrutiny to the future performances where he’s forced to show up without them.
For complete coverage of UFC Fight Night 68, check out the UFC Events section of the site.
Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Danny Downes, a retired UFC and WEC fighter, is an MMAjunkie contributor who also writes for UFC.com and UFC 360. Follow them on twitter at @benfowlkesMMA and @dannyboydownes.
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