UFC 144: Frankie Edgar vs. Benson Henderson in Japan;26 Feb 2012

**Kemal** · 20-02-2012, 19:07

Loss to Anthony Pettis Might Have Been the Best, Most Painful Thing to Happen to Ben Henderson

Ben Henderson isn’t sure how many times he’s seen the same highlight clip replayed over and over. "Hundreds and thousands," he estimates, and that doesn’t even count all the time spent talking about it in interviews. It was just a few seconds of his life lifted from a rare losing effort inside the cage, and a part of him knows that he’ll never fully escape it.

"I’m still not over it. I won’t lie to you," Henderson said. "I still get teary-eyed thinking about it. It affects me deeply to this day. It will affect me for the rest of my fighting career, for a long, long time. I’m very upset about it still. I can put it behind me, but am I totally over it, never think about it? No."

Even if he wanted to forget, the sport wouldn’t let him. The clip of Anthony Pettis launching himself off the cage and into a jumping kick that floored Henderson quickly found its way onto ESPN and into MMA lore. It also changed both men’s lives, though not in the ways they might have expected as they stood in the cage that night in Glendale, Ariz., waiting for the judges’ scores to be read aloud.

Pettis claimed the victory, the fame, and the promise of a UFC title shot that night, though it ultimately came at a price. Henderson ended up sitting at the post-fight press conference, visibly struggling to suppress the tears that came up in waves whenever he thought about what had just happened.

"It was heart-wrenching," he said. "I was sad, and I’m still sad. It was heart-breaking. ...Every time I’m out there, I give you guys everything. I open up my heart and soul. I hold nothing back. To come up short, and to come up short in that manner, that hurt. But I’ll never let that happen again."

That same night, Henderson said, he promised himself that he would not be defined by this one loss, this one kick. He would use it to make himself better, so that when people looked back on his career it would be little more than a footnote. After all, he told himself, didn’t Georges St. Pierre have to see clips of himself getting TKO’d by Matt Serra over and over again? Didn’t it only make him stronger in the end?

"It’s the same thing for me. I’ve had to see that kick hundreds and thousands of times. I have to talk about it over and over and over. But I’m using it. I’m using it to make myself better."

And he has. Even former foes like Pettis -- who will be forced to watch from the UFC 144 undercard this weekend as Henderson gets a crack at UFC lightweight champion Frankie Edgar in Tokyo -- can admit that.

"After our fight, he changed as a fighter," Pettis said. "He’s hungry. You can see it on his face, he’s ready to win this fight."

Henderson will tell you now that, despite the heartbreak of the moment, in the long run the loss was "absolutely beneficial to my career." He didn’t overreact the way some fighters do after a painful defeat, dumping all their coaches and making cosmetic changes in an attempt to fix a problem they haven’t even truly diagnosed yet.

"But I think what I did change was my approach during the fight," he said. "I think against Pettis, the biggest thing I took away was that I was not aggressive enough. I didn’t have enough ring control. I think I did fine in the fight, landed more strikes, all that. But the problem was, I think I was backing up too much."

If anything, the loss made him more aggressive. While he still insists he hates decisions -- "absolutely hate them" -- he resolved to make any fight that does go to the distance into an easy call for the judges and the fans.

"I can’t leave any doubt. There’s going to be no doubt in anyone’s mind after they watch one of my fights as to who won the fight."

That seems problematic against Edgar, a champion who’s never been finished in his MMA career, and who has yet to lose a five-round fight. His indefatigable style and his ability to bounce back from even the most punishing blows make him seem nearly impossible to put him away. Henderson, not surprisingly, doesn’t quite see it that way.

"If you make a mistake, you leave your neck out there for half a second too long, you leave your arm out there, you give me your knee, I will end the fight. If you leave your chin out there? Man, let me touch your chin. I will end the fight. It’s just a matter of a guy making a small mistake and giving me the opportunity."

As for Pettis, the man who gave him this renewed sense of purpose and this extra drive, it’s nice for Henderson to know that his former nemesis is picking him to win this one. And sure, he knows there might be some ulterior motives involved. Pettis could well be hoping that a Henderson win would make a rematch more likely, this time with a bigger title on the line. Henderson doesn’t necessarily disagree with the notion.

"Maybe my second or third title defense, I could see fighting him again. I’d have no problem with that."

After all, Pettis did stick him in that interminable highlight reel hell. It sure would be nice to return the favor. Sooner or later, Henderson said, he feels certain he’ll get the chance.

"I will say this: before I retire, before I leave this earth, I will see Anthony Pettis again in the cage."

It just won’t be this weekend, when Pettis will have to content himself with watching on a monitor backstage while Henderson steps in the Octagon for the title shot he’s had to earn the hard way.

**Asura** · 21-02-2012, 03:27

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsJihB3Qyl0

Het liedje is van een southpark aflevering.

**Kemal** · 21-02-2012, 06:43

Joe Lauzon Relishing Role of Underdog, Unapologetic About Aggressive Style

Ask Joe Lauzon about the last time he was the favorite in a big fight and you'd probably be met with silence. At least, if it did happen, he doesn't remember.
Somehow, after thundering through eight stoppage wins in over half a decade with the UFC, Lauzon remains the quintessential underdog. A congenial assassin trapped in a computer technician's frame. So ask him about facing Anthony Pettis as a 2-to-1 dog at UFC 144, and he'll tell you, any other way just wouldn't be his style.

"I like flying under the radar," Lauzon said to Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour. "I'm not really the guy that's looking to get all kinds of respect and appreciation, and all that kind of stuff. I like to go and have good fights. I like to have exciting fights. I have no problem being the underdog."

Though the title of perennial dark horse comes at a price, and even in victory, a lack of respect often lets its presence be known. Lauzon discovered as much in the aftermath of the biggest, and most stunning, win of his career -- a 47-second shellacking of Melvin Guillard at UFC 136, where, by the way, he was pegged as a 3-to-1 dog.

"I keep seeing all these interviews where (Guillard) is like, 'Oh, Joe didn't beat me. I beat myself,'" Lauzon testily said. "No, I smacked you in the face with my fist, and you went down and I choked you. I'm pretty sure I'm taking credit for that."
Even now, after a triumph so dominant in its result, respect seems hard to come by. Following the upset, Guillard went on to lose to Jim Miller in bizarrely similar fashion -- "How do you lose two fights the exact same way?" Lauzon offhandedly mused -- and now Miller has a date with Nate Diaz as the headlining attraction of UFC on Fox 3.

Many assume the bout will determine the lightweight division's next number-one contender, but with the help of a little inside information, "J-Lau" isn't sleeping on his own chances.

"[Because of] the timing of (Miller vs. Diaz), I think that still puts me and Pettis as the No. 1 contender fight," Lauzon explained. "Just because I don't think that Frankie (Edgar) or Ben (Henderson) are going to want to wait six or seven months before they actually fight again.

"From talking to Joe Silva, he kind of led me to believe a little bit that part of the reason why me and Pettis were going out there was because if something happened with Ben, then one of us would step up and fight for the title. He didn't completely come out and say it, but he was like, ‘it would be a really good thing to have two top-ranked guys out there in case something happened with Ben.'"

The merit of Lauzon's statements can be left to be debated by fans, but there remains one irrefutable backer of his point. The man comes to fight. From the moment the cage doors swing shut, to the moment Bruce Buffer tallies the official results, Lauzon has never left his employers unhappy, and his ridiculous collection of eight ‘Fight Night' bonuses can attest to that.

The weird thing is, no one ever suspects it either. With teenage features and a Twitter account populated with video game references, it's easy to assume the kid from Massachusetts with the funny nickname is out of his league. But underneath Lauzon's affable demeanor lies a slumbering lion just waiting to be awoken, sometimes even to a fault.

"I catch a lot of crap sometimes about gassing and cardio and things like that," Lauzon said. "But I come out and I push hard. I can be in great shape, but when you push as hard as I push, it's tough to maintain that pace."

"On one hand I could ... be like everyone else and have great cardio and never finish fights, but I would rather push and try to finish people. And you know what, if I get tired because I was trying to finish guys? I can deal with that. I don't ever want to be a guy that never finishes anyone but is known for having great cardio."

The words are likely music to Dana White's ears, and with another decisive win it would be hard to deny Lauzon's credentials for title contention. But could history repeat itself? The 27-year-old is once again a significant long shot heading into Sunday's event, but at this point it would almost seem odd if he wasn't.

The real question is, will Anthony Pettis be able to succeed where so many others have failed?

"We're just going to put it on him. I'm sure his gameplan is going to be to kind of ride out the pressure, pace in the first, and then take it to me in the second. But," Lauzon finished matter-of-factly, "A lot of other guys have had that same gameplan and I've still overwhelmed them in the first."
"Like I said, it's easy to have great cardio when you're not really doing a whole lot of work."

**Kemal** · 21-02-2012, 06:57

**Kemal** · 21-02-2012, 06:57

**Kemal** · 21-02-2012, 07:00

**nick diaz** · 21-02-2012, 10:22

Joe Rogan responds to Rampage Jackson's comments

**Kemal** · 21-02-2012, 17:20

**Kemal** · 21-02-2012, 17:20

**Kemal** · 21-02-2012, 17:33

**Kemal** · 21-02-2012, 19:37

After Almost Two Years As Champ, Why Does Edgar Still Have To Prove Himself To Us?

No one is scared of Frankie Edgar. Not really. No one in the UFC seems especially terrified of him, of what he might do to them, of the ways in which a fight with him might forever alter their lives and/or faces. That’s just not the kind of champion he is, and he knows it, even if he doesn’t know exactly why.

Fighters worry about him, maybe. They’re concerned. They know that Edgar keeps finding a way to win -- somehow -- and that’s a problem. Still, it’s not the kind of thing that keeps them up at night or keeps fans enthralled by his dominance, and even Edgar can’t quite explain why that is.

"I don’t know," he told MMA Fighting. "Maybe it’s because I’m a smaller guy. I’m not supposed to win." According to the oddsmakers, that was true until very recently. The first time Edgar fought B.J. Penn for the UFC lightweight title, Penn was a 7-1 favorite. Even after Edgar beat him via decision to claim the belt, Penn was still somewhere in the neighborhood of a 3-1 favorite in the immediate rematch. Edgar won that fight too, this time even more convincingly than the first, but he was still a slight underdog when he defended the belt against Gray Maynard some four months later.

It wasn’t until the third fight with Maynard, which Edgar would go on to win via knockout, that he finally entered a title fight as the (slight) favorite. Even now, coming off arguably the biggest and most decisive win of his career, he’s just barely a favorite -- currently hovering at -130, according to most oddsmakers -- to beat Ben Henderson in Tokyo at UFC 144.

At a certain point, how do you not take this personally, if you’re Edgar? How do you resist the urge to smack the oddsmakers and experts upside the head with your championship belt, WWE-style, and ask them why you don’t get the same respect as the rest of the UFC title-holders?

Only, for better or worse, that’s not the kind of fighter Edgar is. He seems more inclined to laugh and shrug than launch into the Rodney Dangerfield ‘no respect’ schtick. Maybe he hasn’t made a believer out of everyone, he admitted, but "[t]hat doesn’t bother me. I think the longer it took people to come around, it means the more proving I had to do. And once people do come around, I feel like they’re going to stick with me longer."

Besides, there’s not much you can take away from a champion who’s 14-1-1, and has avenged the loss and the draw with a dramatic knockout victory.

"You can’t deny what I did," Edgar said. "I beat B.J. Penn twice, and a lot of people considered him the best lightweight ever. Then I beat Gray, who had never been beaten before. Not only did I beat him, I stopped him."

And yet, even Edgar will admit that the public perception does have some effect, however slight, on the way he perceives his own title reign. This weekend’s fight in Tokyo will mark the first time in over two years that he’s fought someone not named Penn or Maynard, which, for a while there, turned his training into a real mental grind.

"I think that’s why I didn’t really get caught up in [being the champion,]" he said. "I remember coming home with the belt and getting a call from Dana [White] pretty much that next day saying, ‘You’ve got to fight B.J. again.’ I never really even got to settle in to being the champion. I had to get ready to defend it. ...Then I was the underdog my past few fights, so I never even got a chance to feel like a champion. I felt like I constantly had to prove myself, and I kind of still feel that way today."

But how long can that go on? If he beats Henderson, thus defending his title against its third consecutive challenger, who can still doubt him? Who can still look at him and see a champion on borrowed time?

Maybe the better question is, who still sees him that way now? If wins over Penn and Maynard aren’t enough, what will be?

Perhaps we’ll find out soon enough, but in the meantime it doesn’t seem to be bothering Edgar all that much. He’s had plenty of time to get used to it. At this point, maybe he wouldn’t even know how to be that terrifying, dominant champion who the fight world reveres. Maybe he wouldn’t want to be.