I remember Benson Henderson vs. Anthony Pettis 1 like it was yesterday. It was an amazing fight, I loved it, you loved it, we all loved it. It produced arguably the single greatest moment in MMA history: The Showtime Kick. But, it seems like Henderson, as well as Pettis have evolved into new, more dangerous fighters. At this point Ben Henderson has defended the UFC lightweight title more times than BJ Penn, and Anthony Pettis has also turned into a new monster in the last year or so, with dominating performances against Joe Luazon and Cowboy Cerrone.
All of that said, the rematch at UFC 164 in Milwaukee will not be an emotional one, this is according to Ben Henderson, who said as much to MMAJunkie:
“It’s not really too much of an emotional fight,” “I think in life, sometimes, whether you win or lose – good or bad – you have to move on with your life.”‘Hey, I won. I had a cool moment. Blah, blah, blah, blah.’ You can’t live off that moment. You can’t play off that forever. You’ve got to move on with the rest of your life. You’ve got to advance and worry about your next opponent, worry about your next opponent after that, worry about getting to a title shot. For me, it’s not too much motion because I was able to do that.”
“A lot of time guys lose one fight, and they think, ‘Oh, I’ve got to change things up. I’ve got to move and find different coaches.’ Everything pretty much stayed the same. All my coaches stayed the same, all my training partners stayed the same at my gym. So there were no wholesale changes, but I changed the away I approach fights.
“After the Pettis fight, my mindset was to just go in there and go beat the guy up. I don’t care about this or that or media or fans saying this or Dana White saying this or title fights promised. Forget all that. It doesn’t matter. Go out there and beat the guy up. I changed my mindset after that fight.”
When he was presented the rematch against Pettis, Benson jumped at the chance, in smooth form:
“Cool,” sounds good to me. Something I’ve been waiting for for a while, so let’s go ahead and get it done.””I won’t lie to you; I haven’t thought about the rematch a whole lot, to be honest,” “Of course you want to erase it, but you’ve got to understand also that you can’t erase things. You’ve got to man up, get on with your life and move on.
“I took it like a man,” “I lost. It happens. The 18-0 New England Patriots, they lost, but they moved on. They got over it. The ’91 Bulls, when they lost, it happens. You have to man up, move on, accept it, take it for what it is. Learn from it, grow better from it, improve from it, and then go out there and do your thing again.
“I’m going to go out there and beat him up. I’m going to dominate him for five rounds.”
If only Benson would say he was going to finish Pettis, and not just dominate him for five rounds. He’s becoming the vertical GSP, that’s slightly more exciting. Either way, this fight is going to deliver. There’s no way it won’t.
