Well Benson's religious proclamations are bound to be polarizing since religion itself is one of the two most polarizing topics, along with politics, that there is to discuss. No matter how much of a rep Benson has for being modest, approachable, compassionate and down to earth in real life, those who have personal grudges and issues over religion are gonna see him as a hyper arrogant douche bag for taking even half a minute to thank the Lord and say "Can I get an Amen?". And so this spills over into other aspects of him that cause hate too.
For example all those fights he allegedly won because the other guy got screwed and therefore don't count as real wins. Benson's biggest haters think his record should be changed to 16-9 as of right now. I think that fans' personal dislike for his religious demeanor also blind them tot he fact that in some of fights his opponents were at fault as well for not being able to sway the judges in a truly convincing manner.
As likable as Josh Thomson as become, to me at least, he has shown that in particularly close fights he does not have the fight Iq needed to push the decision towards him. We also saw that in his following fight with Bobby Green and in his third loss to Gil Melendez. Whereas Benson clearly does. But resentful fans placed 100 % of the blame on Benson for that. And Edgar, I feel in both fights had gotten complacent with the idea of cruising to UD victories and blatantly violating one of modern MMA's commandments: to paraphrase Dana, "Thou shalt not leave it in the hands of the judges". Which we saw in the first fight - and again, the idea that the first fight was some sort of actual robbery is insane to me. Yes, I do think you can make a case Frankie won the first fight but if we are listing what could be called the worst UFC robberies that first fight would not even be in the top 40. That was not a fight Frankie won decisively at all. Perhaps the second fight was, but even then, a lot of that was Frankie paying the price for leaving it in the hands of the judges.
