Controversy abounded at UFC 204 when Michael Bisping retained his middleweight title when he defeated Dan Henderson via decision in the main event of the show.
Henderson, who recently sat down and watched the entire fight for the first time, spoke to Champions.co about how he felt that he won the fight.
“It’s been a pretty mellow week since UFC 204, but I still haven’t reconciled myself with the scoring the judges put forth for my fight with Michael Bisping. I finally got around to watching the video of it last night, and I’ll admit, I’m pretty pissed about it. I was going to say frustrated, but that doesn’t quite cover the range of feelings I’ve got right now. He just wasn’t doing anything to me. He was throwing punches that weren’t really landing or were just barely touching me. Most of the punches I was throwing were meant to hurt him, and obviously, they did. There was a big difference in our significant strikes. I think the definition of that needs to be spelled out better, because he didn’t throw that many significant strikes. He didn’t hurt me once… he really didn’t do anything other than kick me in the balls, and then tried to capitalize on it when the ref didn’t stop the fight for a recovery period,” Henderson said.
Henderson, in the very same interview, even went more in depth about which rounds he won and why he won the fight overall.
“I absolutely felt that I won rounds one and two, and the fifth. I landed almost or as much as he did and I took him down in the fifth. Going into that last round, I felt that worst case, it would be a draw. I didn’t want that. I wanted to win, so I went out there and poured it on, and I’m sure I did. That’s how I felt that night, and even moreso after watching the video. I don’t know what type of fight anyone’s ever witnessed or been in, whether it be in a school yard, a professional arena or in a bar, where if one opponent looks like Mike did, if he looks like a guy that got his ass kicked…he probably did get his ass kicked. He’d probably be called by everyone the loser of the fight,” said Henderson.
Henderson is now in retirement and Michael Bisping’s next fight is yet to be announced, but the fighters are 1-1-0 against each other.
