Hendricks discovered punching power at arcade

Punching power is definitely something you can develop, but it can also be a natural talent of great athletes. Johny Hendricks was never known as a big puncher in his early career, but in his recent fights to earn a title fight, Hendricks has shown one punch knockout ability. How did Hendricks first realize he had serious punching power?

It was back when Hendricks was still fairly new to the UFC and the sport of MMA. He and Ehrhardt had gone to London for a UFC expo, and after the autograph signing was done for the day, they figured they’d entertain themselves by trying out a machine that purported to measure punching power.

Jon Jones had hit it, Ehrhardt told MMAjunkie in an interview for a special feature on Hendricks, which comes out in Friday’s special UFC 167 pullout section in USA TODAY. Matt Mitrione and some other heavyweights had also hit it. Then Johny hit it, and he beat everybody’s scores. We just kind of thought, hey, wow.

The next day, Ehrhardt said, they went to a boxing gym in London that had a similar machine. There, all the top records belonged to local heavyweights.

So Johny hit that one, and he broke that record too, Ehrhardt said. That’s when the switch flipped for both of us, and we thought, there’s some real power in that left hand.

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