As a general rule, the UFC does not lose out on fighters it covets. The UFC has the most prestigious belts, the most rabid audiences and the largest imprint. Most everything you would want as a fighter is under that roof or in that Octagon. But not exactly everything.
If it was, Benson Henderson would not be thinking about the possibility of taking his toothpick and plying his trade elsewhere. After beating Jorge Masvidal in South Korea in Saturday's UFC Fight Night main event, the former UFC lightweight champion finally acknowledged during the post-fight press conference the long-rumored belief that he would test free agency.
The man who will seemingly fight anytime seems right on time for prime market conditions. He enters free agency at its most competitive point in years, at least since UFC parent company Zuffa acquired Strikeforce in 2011. And he does so with some leverage, having won two straight since moving up to welterweight.
Those factors should combine to make the 32-year-old a wanted commodity, with suitors coming from not only the U.S. but also overseas. While Bellator will certainly be interested in his services to add quality and depth to its roster, so will be One Championship, the Singapore-based promotion that has expanded rapidly across Asia.
This makes Henderson the rare case of a fighter who is free and wanted and could ostensibly land anywhere. Generally speaking, we rarely get to this point; the UFC tends to re-sign wanted athletes before their deals expire. But in hopes of testing the market, Henderson gambled on himself, rode out his deal and now gets the chance to listen to multiple offers that may be both lucrative and creative.
While media conglomerate Viacom has owned a majority stake of Bellator since the fall of 2011, it did not ramp up free-agent activity until Scott Coker replaced Bjorn Rebney in the summer of 2014, bringing with him a starkly different philosophy centered on name-driven events over tournaments. Late in 2014, Coker let it be publicly known that he would be in the bidding for any major name who came on the market, telling MMA Fighting, "There's not going to be a fighter on the planet we can't afford and have access to."
Unfortunately for Coker and Bellator, precious few championship-level fighters have hit the open market in the time since. Though they have managed to snag both Phil Davis and Josh Thomson, both of those signings could be written off by the UFC as unwanted commodities. Davis had lost two of three and had repeatedly stalled as he neared the top of the division; Thomson had lost three straight and was nearing his 37th birthday at the time of his signing.
Free agent! The ONLY way fighters will make real money again in this sport. Fight your contracts out???? Smart move @BensonHenderson
— Josh Koscheck (@JoshKoscheck) November 28, 2015
Henderson is different, a former lightweight champ in both the UFC and WEC who has shown few signs of slipping from his prime. Even if you look at his record since losing the UFC lightweight belt, he is 4-2 in his last six fights, with his only losses to current champion Rafael dos Anjos and No. 1 contender Donald Cerrone. The latter fight, by the way, was one most onlookers judged in Henderson's favor.
In other words, he remains an elite fighter with mileage to spare.
While Coker hung out the "open for business" shingle long ago, Bellator's attractiveness as a suitor was recently helped by the UFC's exclusive sponsorship deal with Reebok. While that deal put a huge dent in UFC individual athlete sponsorships, Bellator fighters are free to contract with a host of companies and brands that were locked out of the system.
The move caused many disparate opinions and created something of a new class hierarchy that prized the tenured, big names. Generally, the champions and others who collect money based off pay-per-view buys are going to want to remain in the UFC. No one else can match that deal or draw the audiences that will lead to seven-figure paydays. But one step below that is a class of fighters who are not so lucky. They may make a good purse comparative to other fighters, but otherwise they have few ways to cash in on a name that they spend years building.
Henderson is in that camp; he's a frequent focus as one of the best lightweights of the last decade who headlined 10 of the 14 UFC events in which he participated. During that time, Henderson was never a pay-per-view cash cow or ratings monster, but he was versatile and reliable and without question a key component of the roster.
His utility cannot be understated. Aside from his headlining ability, three times in 2015, he accepted short-notice bouts with replacements. First, it was against Cerrone on just 13 days' notice. Despite losing, he took an even greater risk next time out, facing Brandon Thatch on two weeks' notice and moving up a division in the process. He likewise stepped up in this most recent event, taking a short-notice bout with Jorge Masvidal after Thiago Alves injured his ribs two weeks before showtime.
In a sport where injuries can scuttle major plans in a heartbeat, that gameness has real-world value. If the UFC so frequently used him to prop up an event, imagine what he could do in Bellator, where he would arrive as an instant challenger to lightweight champ Will Brooks or welterweight kingpin Andrey Koreshkov—or in One Championship, where he could match up with 155-pound titleholder Shinya Aoki or as a compelling challenger to 170-pound champ Ben Askren.
He could do any one of those things. Or, of course, he could stay in the UFC, where he is still ranked seventh as a lightweight and may simultaneously break into the Top 15 at welterweight with his recent win.
In other words, he has options. That's great for him and not so great for the UFC. Henderson's free agency does not necessarily mean an exodus is coming, but rest assured that others on the roster will be watching closely, thinking about their worth and contemplating a gamble of their own—consideration that proves the market is not as one-sided as it used to be.
