44-year-old Dan Henderson needs a win tonight in New Orleans. The veteran fighter has dropped five out of his last six bouts, and his once-uncrackable chin has started to wear down as well. He faces off with Tim Boetsch in the main event of UFC Fight Night: New Orleans, and has been a focus of conversation due to the recent banning of TRT by the Nevada State Athletic Commission. On top of that, the UFC has partnered with USADA to do random drug testing.
Hendo spoke to MMA Junkie about it, and while he’s a proponent of the random testing, he wasn’t a big fan of how the commission handled the banning of TRT:
“I’ve been asking for that for a few years (the drug testing). They just up and got rid of TRT instead, but some people actually need it. It’s unfortunate that that’s the way it went, but I am happy that they’re cracking down now. It’s definitely taken them long enough, but I’m happy with where they’re at.”
In a somewhat surprising statement, he said that it wasn’t a big deal for him to get off of it because he wasn’t taking that much.
“I wasn’t really taking that much to begin with. I just kind of quit cold turkey.”
I’m not sure how you just quit something that you “need”, but whatever. The last bout he used it for was his 2014 over Mauricio Rua, and he has lost two straight since then. The former Pride and Strikeforce champion reiterated his stance that the lack of random testing was the real problem before:
“It’s unfortunate that it came down to this. They should have just started doing the no-advance-notice drug testing randomly, and that would have cured all the problems.
“TRT being legal or not, the no-advance-notice testing would make sure no one’s abusing anything.”
Henderson (30-13, 7-7 UFC) is an underdog going into tonight’s middleweight fight with Boetsch (18-8, 9-7 UFC).
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