Johny Hendricks first realized KO power with arcade-style punching machine

If you ask Team Takedown founder Ted Ehrhardt when he first figured out that Johny Hendricks had serious power in his left hand, he’ll tell you it was an arcade-style punch machine that convinced him.

This was before Hendricks (15-1 MMA, 10-1 UFC) cold-clocked Jon Fitch in 12 seconds and then ran around the cage looking like even he couldn’t believe what had just happened. It was before he dropped Martin Kampmann in the exact same fashion, and long before he won the right to face UFC welterweight champ Georges St-Pierre (24-2 MMA, 18-2 UFC) on Saturday at UFC 167 in Las Vegas.

It was back when Hendricks was still fairly new to the UFC and the sport of MMA. He and Ehrhardt had gone to London for a UFC expo, and after the autograph signing was done for the day, they figured they’d entertain themselves by trying out a machine that purported to measure punching power.

“Jon Jones had hit it,” Ehrhardt told MMAjunkie in an interview for a special feature on Hendricks, which comes out in Friday’s special UFC 167 pullout section in USA TODAY. “Matt Mitrione and some other heavyweights had also hit it. Then Johny hit it, and he beat everybody’s scores. We just kind of thought, hey, wow.”

The next day, Ehrhardt said, they went to a boxing gym in London that had a similar machine. There, all the top records belonged to local heavyweights.

“So Johny hit that one, and he broke that record too,” Ehrhardt said. “That’s when the switch flipped for both of us, and we thought, there’s some real power in that left hand.”

Call it a pleasant surprise for Ehrhardt, who was betting that it would be Hendricks’ wrestling ability that would turn him into a UFC star. That’s why he started Team Takedown, he said, with the goal of helping promising amateur wrestlers get started in MMA by giving them a monthly stipend to live on and an introduction at the gyms that would give them the best chance at success.

That plan hit a few snags along the way, such as when Hendricks got knocked cold by Phil Baroni on his first day at Xtreme Couture. To hear Ehrhardt tell it, he wasn’t the only Team Takedown member who had more enthusiasm than skill at first.

Take Jake Rosholt, the original Team Takedown member, who also learned some hard lessons at Xtreme Couture.

“Jake was going in there in the pro class, sparring all the time and just getting beat up,” Ehrhardt said. “Randy [Couture] called me and said, ‘Ted, you’ve got to get him in private [lessons] because he’s getting beat on, and that’s not the way you want to learn.’”

Looking back, Ehrhardt admitted, it’s possible they were “a little naive” about what it would take to be successful.

“MMA is a tough sport, and just because you’re the better wrestler doesn’t mean you’re the better fighter,” Ehrhardt said. “Even if you are the better fighter, you can still lose. Anything can happen in there.”

That’s why it helps to have power, that old agent of chaos, on your side. While Ehrhardt was surprised to find it in a fighter he’d recruited for his wrestling ability, Kevin Hendricks – Johny’s father – wasn’t. Raw power “sort of runs in our family,” he said, though that wasn’t what made him think his son could go far in MMA.

“When he signed on to do it, his mother and I were not real happy,” the elder Hendricks said. “But I told Ted right away that he would fight for the championship, just because of his work ethic.”

And sure, work ethic always helps. But so does having a sledgehammer for a left hand.

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