When Johny Hendricks entered the UFC in 2009, he quickly became a fan favorite because of his crisp boxing and knockout power. So when his last bout against the equally popular and exciting Matt Brown was announced for UFC 185, everybody expected a standup war. Instead, Hendricks delivered a dominant, but rather unspectacular, wrestling-heavy performance.
In a media scrum last weekend at UFC on FOX 15, he weighed-in on that fight and gave us a reason for this new approach to fighting.
“I wanna put on a show for the fans, but I also have to win. You know, look where that got me: You put on a show for the fans and you end up losing. You know what I mean? I will definitely go back to whatever I win at,” says Hendricks. “Sometimes, the fans are very hard to please and you just gotta accept that. And sometimes you sit there and you say: Man, I did my best, and my best was that little style and I had to do it. I won, and maybe in the next one I can mix it up a little bit better.”
Hendricks, a NCAA Division I All-American wrestler, went on to explain that his rediscovered wrestling-base has a lot do with the scoring of the judges in his last couple of fights.
“You can’t just sit there and say, ‘I’m just a striker’. I kind of fell into that,” says Hendricks. “I started outpointing everybody, but sometimes you don’t get the win. I outpointed a lot of people in the last couple of fights, and you don’t win them. So what wins the fights? Whenever you can hold somebody down and punch him a bunch and do those kind of things, well, that’s definitely a good notch in your belt if it goes to a decision.”
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