Hendo: 1st Shogun fight not exciting in my mind
Dan Henderson: “In my mind, it wasn’t nearly as exciting as it was for all the fans who were watching not knowing what was going through my head…”
When Dan Henderson battled ‘Shogun’ for five amazing rounds, many fans and media believed it was one of the most exciting fights they had ever seen.
Of course, fighter’s remember fights different than fans and Henderson didn’t think the fight was nearly as exciting as it was happening:
“I felt I pretty much controlled that fight,” said Henderson, who will face Rua in a rematch on Sunday in Brazil in a fight card televised on Fox Sports 1.
Even in the fifth round, when Rua spent much of it in mount and was firing away at Henderson in a desperate bid to end the bout, Henderson was unfazed.
He was exhausted in the fifth and didn’t have a lot of energy to try to get Rua off of him, but he said Rua didn’t have much on those punches.
“Maybe I got a little too excited early on and didn’t pick my shots well enough,” Henderson told Yahoo Sports in going through a detailed examination of the fight round by round. “I paid for it, being so tired in that fifth round from really trying to finish him and throwing a lot of hard punches during the fight.
“Going into that fifth round, I felt like I was OK. I knew I won the first three rounds, possibly even a 10-8 in the third, so I knew I wouldn’t lose a decision. I also knew there was no way he was going to finish me. In my mind, it wasn’t nearly as exciting as it was for all the fans who were watching not knowing what was going through my head and me knowing there was no way he was going to finish me.”
