Henderson and Lesnar Illustrate Why Fighters Can’t Be Honest Anymore

For those of us who followed MMA long before “The Ultimate Fighter” and the resulting explosion of popularity that the sport has enjoyed, one of the best perks of its former “underground” status was the accessibility and honesty of the fighters.  Professional fighters would frequent MMA forums such as MMA.tv and Sherdog.net and talk with fans, would openly discuss strategies, training regimens and feelings about other fighters, and were pretty much regular people.

If you went to a UFC event in Las Vegas, there was a good chance that you would not only get to meet several fighters and get their autographs, but also get the chance to actually hang out with them.  You didn’t need some sort of “fan expo” where you could get an autograph and 20 seconds to exchange pleasantries with Forrest Griffin, because you could go to one of the bars and do shots with Chuck Liddell (which my brother knows about firsthand).

Fighters would (and to a large extent, still do) come onto internet radio shows that no one has ever heard of, and even big-name fighters would do interviews for just about anybody with a Geocities site.  At the same time, if you were lucky enough to live near a top-level gym, you could stop by and watch a few champions of the world spar with one another, twenty feet away from where you were sitting.

Not all of these things have changed, but they are definitely moving in that direction.  The first unfortunate casualty of the incredible growth of the sport will undoubtedly be the honesty level of the top fighters in the world.  We are steadily moving to where every other sport in the world seems to have gone, where an athlete can’t be completely honest for worry of being raked over the coals by every major media outlet in existence until a new whipping boy is found.

If you follow team sports such as baseball, basketball, football, or others, you already know that the days of athletes giving colorful quotes and honest assessments of their opinions of other players are long gone.  Now, the players in major sports that provide good, entertaining interviews are few and far between.  In most sports, you can’t so much as criticize the referees or the league that you play in without getting a hefty fine, for example.

How does this relate to MMA?  Well, let’s just say that UFC 100 was not just notable for the number assigned to the event.  We also saw the beginning of the end of honest remarks from our top fighters.  For Exhibit A, let’s look at Dan Henderson’s remarks following his utter destruction of Michael Bisping.

After the fight, in his interview with Joe Rogan, Hendo did what pretty much no other fighter has ever done and admitted that he got an “extra shot” in on Bisping after knocking him out on purpose.  He said he did so to “shut Bisping up”, which seems like a pretty honest assessment.  The problem is that, to my knowledge, very few (if any) fighters have ever admitted to knowing that their opponent was asleep and purposefully giving them an extra shot or two (or in the case of some fighters, several more).  They always said things like, “it’s my job to fight until the referee stops it,” or, “things happen quickly and you never know if the guy will recover”.  Boring, politically correct lies, in other words.

Every fighter knows damn well when he has knocked his opponent unconscious.  Do you expect me to believe that in sparring sessions, these guys are knocking out their teammates, then beating them to a pulp for several more seconds before realizing, “oh crap…he’s out after all”?  Do you really think that Quinton “Rampage” Jackson didn’t know any better when he landed a few shots in on a completely unconscious Wanderlei Silva (as the referee was struggling to pull him away, no less), or that Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic had no idea that his masked opponent Dos Caras Jr. was asleep on the ropes when he hit him with an infamous follow-up uppercut at Bushido 1?

Those are some of the more blatant examples, but I used those examples for a reason.  You simply can’t argue that in either of those cases, or many more just like them, that the victorious fighter hadn’t processed that the other fighter is already “out”.  These guys are world-class athletes, full of fast-twitch muscles and geared towards quick reactions to anything that happens in the ring or cage, but they can’t stop themselves when seeing that their opponent is limp before landing a few shots on accident?  Come on.

I don’t take issue with that, though.  I take issue with people busting Henderson’s chops because he’s one of the only fighters to date that has admitted that he hit Bisping an extra time on purpose.  It’s crazy to me that fans and the media are not so much worried about the act itself as the fact that the guy had the honesty to admit why he did it.  So, what’s happened now?  Well, Hendo has already said that he won’t be making a comment like that again.  So we’ve just seen a fighter learn the lesson that you simply can’t be that honest in this sport, unless you want to set off a media firestorm and be villainized by 14-year olds on message boards for the next few weeks.

It’s the same with Brock Lesnar.  What did he do wrong, exactly?  Oh, that’s right.  He was honest about his feelings toward Frank Mir, Bud Light, and the fans in general.  He was even a little too honest about his plans for that night, as well.  What happened to him?

Well, he learned his lesson.  He showed up at the post-fight press conference, looking like a scolded dog, taking back everything that he said in the heat of the moment and promising to improve his behavior.
Tell me this, though: regardless of your opinion of Lesnar’s comments in the ring after his fight, which version of Lesnar was more entertaining:  the one who spoke his mind or the one who instantly turned into a PR machine at the post-fight press conference? 

Lesnar is good for the sport not just because he’s a great athlete in a historically mediocre division, but also because he brings a level of charisma and entertainment to his interviews and actions that other fighters can’t approach.  Now, we’re going to strip him of that and make him into another dull athlete who gives all the politically correct answers?  Great.

You know, if Dana White, the MMA media, and the fans are that worried about Bud Light, ESPN, or any of the other organizations and companies that never gave a crap about MMA a few years ago turning up their noses at the actions and words of fighters, maybe the UFC should stop shoving a microphone in fighters’ faces within seconds of them beating another human being unconscious.  A lot of great, entertaining stuff comes out of the post-fight interviews, because fighters still have their adrenaline pumping, they’re excited or maybe even disappointed, and most of all, they just feel like “letting it all out”.  You can’t have it both ways, though.  Are fighters supposed to be regular people like the rest of us- people with opinions and personalities- or PR robots that can be counted on to behave when mainstream media outlets finally decide that the sport is worth acknowledging?

One of the main reasons why the sport is as big as it is has to do with the athletes being so accessible and honest, as well as the fact that the fans can relate to them.  If you want to see less of the kind of honesty that Dan Henderson and Brock Lesnar brought to the table last Saturday night, be careful what you wish for.

by Jon Hartley for Fightmania.com

Tags: Brock Lesnar, Chuck Liddell, Dan Henderson, Dana White, Forrest Griffin, Frank Mir, UFC, Wanderlei Silva