How good was Dan Henderson?

[swarrrm]

One of the p4p goats. Top 10 wins over 3 weight classes and championships in multiple promotions.

 

[Eric Silva 2.0]

Everyone knows Dan was on TRT but as has been pointed out almost everyone from that era was on something. I wish everyone in the pride -> strikeforce era was clean but they weren't. They were almost all heinously unclean.

So pointing out the fact that Dan is on PED is worthless. Dan was honest about it, the rest weren't. Doesn't make it good.

Dan also never got in trouble outside the cage like Jon which is in reality why Jon takes so much heat but you want to somehow compare Dan to Jon, that is an incredibly stupid comparison. As for me, I think Jon is the greatest MMA fighter of all time and I can't stand him.

Everyone knows Dan was on TRT but as has been pointed out almost everyone from that era was on something. I wish everyone in the pride -> strikeforce era was clean but they weren't. They were almost all heinously unclean.

So pointing out the fact that Dan is on PED is worthless. Dan was honest about it, the rest weren't. Doesn't make it good.

Dan also never got in trouble outside the cage like Jon which is in reality why Jon takes so much heat but you want to somehow compare Dan to Jon, that is an incredibly stupid comparison. As for me, I think Jon is the greatest MMA fighter of all time and I can't stand him.

Obviously Jon outside the cage is indefensible. I was talking about PED's and how some guys take more flack than others. I like Dan too but there are strong biases on here.

 

[Small Town Andrew]

Obviously Jon outside the cage is indefensible. I was talking about PED's and how some guys take more flack than others. I like Dan too but there are strong biases on here.

Jon Jones was in the prime of his career and there's a very good argument for him being the GOAT. Of course people are going to judge him more harshly than Hendo who got his TRT exemption when he was damn near 40. Also it was completely regulated and sanctioned by the commission and not illegal substances that he had to serve suspension for.

Of course who knows what he did in Pride when he was younger but we dont have any way of knowing.

 

[TheBulge]

The Hendo bomb would take out anyone except maybe some heavyweights

Oh it would. Manhoef was another MW and he put a prime Hunt out cold(And Prime Hunt's chin is about as good as it gets), Hendo certainly has the same power if not more. .

 

[Doom]

One of the best to ever do it, top 5 easily

 

[Mr Fahrenheit]

You thought he looked bad against BIsping in the second fight? I actually scored it a draw. Henderson did great all things considered and Bisping was near death in the first round.

This. To get that close to a title at that age is amazing. Dan had some slightly puzzling losses here and there, but he was a legitimate threat to beat anyone between 185 and 205 for a long time.

Would’ve been really interesting to see what a guy like that could’ve become if he’d come into the sport a little later and gotten the kind of training guys like Usman, Gaethje, GSP, Rory, Jones, etc. have gotten from their elite modern camps. With concrete for hands and a chin and great core strength and wrestling, imagine equipping a guy like that with a great jab and perhaps some better submission skills.

 

[Texan6533]

Couldn’t put him away, couldn’t brawl with him. He was super strong and had a great wrestling base. You could tell he was one of those fighters that other fighters knew would be a problem no matter how skilled they were.

Probably top 3 greatest American fighters of all time.

 

[1BadMF]

One of the all time greats.

I don't remember what Pride it was when he was fighting Vanderlai
but they had this awesome animated show intro where they had Hendo on his ranch. Anyone
remember that or know where there might be a youtube link?

 

[Winbot]

People don't really talk about what an amazingly gifted athlete Henderson was. Dude loads up on one punch for literally the entirety of every fight he was in. He doesn't even remotely try to hide it. He doesn't feint, he doesn't do anything fancy to cut the cage, he's fighting some of the best strikers of his day and the fucker still manages to land that stupid overhand. I don't care what anyone says that shit takes timing and speed like very few fighters have. Absolute legend.

 

[VenomCarnage]

One of the most forgotten names in the game when it comes to all-time lists etc.

I personally think Dan is in the top 15 fighters of all-time, even now.

 

[Mr Fahrenheit]

p4p legend in the sport.

Middleweight who made his career fighting LHWs and HWs... and beating them! He has wins over Nog and Fedor at HW ffs.

Two Pride belts at one time. The only thing missing from his resume is that UFC MW championship. He had the misfortune of fighting peak Anderson Silva and then Bisping when he was mid 40s, so it was a hard ask.

Agree, and I would add that the LHW belt was within reach too. His loss to Rampage was very competitive, and it came at a time when styles made fights at the top of the division. Chuck, Rampage, Forrest, Rashad, Machida, Shogun, all in succession. I can him losing to all of those guys but I can also see him picking up some wins. He went on to have very competitive fights with several of them a few years later.

Anderson was a little too good at that time and Hendo would’ve been a pretty big underdog even if they’d fought ten times. But I think his splitter over Rich is indicative of how those two would have always matched up, and Rich was a very legit reigning champion at 185.

Interestingly, Dan was on an impressive three fight winning streak when he left for strikeforce: UD over the dangerous Palhares, SD over Franklin, legendary KO of Bisping. That was right around the time that Anderson had his lackluster performance against Maia and then was nearly beaten by Chael. It seems likely that Dan could’ve earned a rematch with one or two more wins and I think he matched up well against any of the UFC middleweights he would’ve faced. Similarly, the aforementioned carousel at 205 was underway and it’s possible that another shot would have emerged there (pre-Bones of course, because he’s never winning that fight).

Beating Vitor and then sparking Wanderlei cold to win the Pride middleweight (205) title is just as legitimate as claiming a UFC title IMO (and while welterweight/185 wasn’t as prestigious in Pride he had that title at the same time).

 

[Mr Fahrenheit]

Obviously Jon outside the cage is indefensible. I was talking about PED's and how some guys take more flack than others. I like Dan too but there are strong biases on here.

Wasn’t doctor-prescribed TRT perfectly legal at the time? Certainly it was a loophole (lol at merely needing to find one of the nearly one million doctors in the U.S. to green light your drugs) but those were the rules.

Agree that a consistent standard of judgment isn’t applied with respect to PEDs more broadly. To me it mainly seems to boil down to whether the GOAT conversation is implicated. Nobody really cares that Ubereem or TRT Vitor were enhanced, and if anything we remember it fondly. I suspect it would be different if they’d claimed belts and entered the discussion of who is the best ever in their respective divisions. With someone like Jones I think fans resent that his drug use might have altered the course of the division, perhaps by denying someone like Cormier or Gus a chance to score a historic win and add his name to the annals as an undisputed champ (I think we agree that DC has an asterisk). TJD and the EPO is another example, whereas we don’t care as much about Hendricks because Georges and Lawler didn’t really lose any aspect of their legacies as a result.

 

[DoctorDeelon]

Agree, and I would add that the LHW belt was within reach too.

I think so too. If he never left for Strikeforce, I think he could have gotten the job done against Lyoto or Shogun potentially. But that window closes as soon as Jones takes the title, because Hendo could never beat Jones.

 

[J Danger]

I always liked him. Thought it was kinda shitty how he and Bisping squashed their beef, Bisping praises him in his book, and then he started attacking him on Twitter over commentary. Didn’t seem like Dan Henderson like behavior

 

[oscerthegrouch]

He was Dan

 

[TysonandKhabib]

Legend!

 

[Yrat]

Legend!

What is Dans heritage? Cherokee?

 

[BalloonFoot]

Dan is a legend!

 

[ShowYouRoll]

Henderson always had that equalizer, the Lombard fight shows what Dan was all about

 

[Eric Silva 2.0]

Jon Jones was in the prime of his career and there's a very good argument for him being the GOAT. Of course people are going to judge him more harshly than Hendo who got his TRT exemption when he was damn near 40. Also it was completely regulated and sanctioned by the commission and not illegal substances that he had to serve suspension for.

Of course who knows what he did in Pride when he was younger but we dont have any way of knowing.

"Of course who knows what he did, we don't have any way of knowing"
That's generally the way I see it. There are some obvious things to see but it's fighting so for me anything pretty much goes. How can I come down on a guy for PED's when i'm not sure about anybody else?