Issue 098

March 2013

Thanks to two scorching sub-60-second KOs, UFC welterweight Johny Hendricks has sped from pretender to contender. And all after hating the very thing that launched his career

It’s incredible how quickly the MMA landscape can change. Between Georges St Pierre’s last two UFC title defenses, April 2011 and November 2012, the 170lb division has gone from ‘cleaned out’ to being packed with contenders. One of the best is Team Takedown’s Johny Hendricks.

Born in Oklahoma, 14-1 Hendricks showed a natural gift for sports from an early age, most notably baseball. “My parents were instrumental in me being a part of sports,” the 29-year-old states in an exclusive interview with Fighters Only. 

“The reason I did so many sports is because if I did something good in sports, then I’d be rewarded, that’s how my parents raised me: do good in sports and you can get further in life. Not so much the school aspect, but they knew that if I worked hard and did the right thing, I might be able to go to college.”

The youngest of three children, Hendricks was toughened up early thanks to sibling scraps, with punishment mostly dispatched by his older brother, Ray.

“I would get beaten up by my brother because he’s five years older than me. I’d be in bed at two in the morning and he’d come in with his friends and get me up to play video games or whatever they wanted me to do, and if I didn’t want to do it they’d try and rough me up.

“It was that sort of lifestyle, but it was worth it. It sort of helped me enjoy what I do now.”

Whilst his run-ins with his older brother didn’t break him, the future NCAA Division I champion wrestler’s first journey onto the grappling mats of Edmond Memorial High School nearly did.

“I didn’t automatically like wrestling, I definitely did not like wrestling,” he explains. “In fact, I wanted to do everything but wrestle in my first year of doing it. There was a kid who was three years older than me and he kept beating me until I quit, and my dad didn’t let me wrestle again the next year. Halfway through the season I came back and I’ve been wrestling year-round ever since then.

“Those first few years of wrestling showed me that if I quit something, I’m done. If I was a couple of feet taller, if I was six foot, I’d have probably gone for different dreams, but everything works out in a certain way and mine was to be a five-foot-nine wrestler.”

And it’s not as if Hendricks has a quitter’s mentality. In fact, it was his competitiveness and distaste for losing which made him quit, and it’s that same competitiveness that sent him back to wrestling.

“There’s nothing in this world I can’t turn into a competition. That’s sort of the way I’ve always been, but it just makes everything that much more fun. If you’re doing good then it feels great, but if you’re doing bad then you push yourself that much harder.

“Wrestling showed me what it’s like to strive for something. Whenever you wrestle you’re competing and you’re always doing stuff with someone in your division or your group, but what wrestling does is teach you how you can push yourself and shows you what you can expect from yourself while you’re training. That’s the biggest part of wrestling.”

A stalwart on the Oklahoma State University wrestling team under legendary coach John Smith, Hendricks won two NCAA titles at 165lb, before a moment in the finals of his third attempt at the same championship changed the trajectory of his life.

“In my senior year, I lost to Mark Perry. That’s what really set me on the path that I’m on today,” Hendricks remembers. “After I lost that match I had to ask myself, ‘Is there anything else I can accomplish outside of the wrestling world?’”

After watching fellow OSU wrestler and former Strikeforce light heavyweight champion Muhammed Lawal begin his mixed martial arts training after failing to reach the Olympics, Hendricks decided to give MMA a shot.

It could take years of mixed martial arts training and traveling to seminars held by more established fighters, not to mention amateur bouts, before a person gathers enough courage and confidence to make their professional debut. For Hendricks, it took three months.

“In the first couple of exchanges during the first round, he (Victor Rackliff) beat me up,” Hendricks reminisces of the fight at Masters of the Cage 16 in 2007. “He was winning in the striking, but I was taking him down, and in the second round the same thing happened.

“I knew in the third round I had to make my stand and start throwing punches back at this guy, so I started hitting him and that’s when the striking started to evolve to where it is now. In practice, I could do a little bit of sparring, but not too much because I just wasn’t comfortable with it, but in that fight I told myself that no matter what happens I have to start winning on the stand-up. I ended up knocking him out.”

Not only was his move into MMA swift, so was his rise. Whilst other 2007 debutants continued fighting on the regional circuit, Hendricks joined the UFC in just under two years. But as impressive as his accelerated climb toward MMA’s biggest organization was, it also offered up some unique issues for Hendricks and his coaches.

“My last fight in the WEC told me that I was mentally strong enough to go to the next level, but the UFC is a little pond with a lot of big fish and I actually wondered how I was going to survive in the promotion. I was going to have to change up a lot of things. 

“I knew I had to work harder than everybody else because I didn’t have the luxury of having five years’ worth of experience to get in the UFC or have my game fully developed. I knew that I had to develop a game quick and that really made me improve myself.”

In his first four fights in the UFC, Hendricks went undefeated, knocking out TUF winner Amir Sadollah and respected Charlie Brenneman on the way. However, it was his loss to Rick Story that really changed the way Hendricks went about training for future bouts.

He explains: “Before the Rick Story fight, I would say I was at a bit of a stand-still in my mind. I would do something good, but I would still be fighting on the undercard. All of a sudden I’m not sure if I’m able to break the top 10. I was doing crappy stuff, but I was winning still and since I was winning, I was OK with it. After the loss, me and Marc (Laimon, coach) sat down and really nitpicked my game. We watched every fight and critiqued every aspect of it. We had something like 50 things figured out from all that.

“Now, the first week I get back, we talk a lot about what can be done better and then we move forward with it. That’s been the base of our camp since that loss and that’s really what helped me get to the other level.”

After knocking out TJ Waldburger on his return at UFC Fight Night: Nogueira vs Davis in 2011, and winning a razor-thin split decision against Mike Pierce at UFC 133, Hendricks was set the task of defeating arguably the best welterweight in the UFC who wasn’t GSP: Jon Fitch.

Not a fan of checking the headlines before bouts, Hendricks was able to drown out the doubters for a while, but eventually, the opinions got back to him. Safe to say, he was not a happy man.

“I was pretty hurt by what they were saying. In the end, I was like, ‘Who cares who he is? All I need to do is hit him one time.’” And one time was all he needed, knocking out Fitch in 12 seconds. The next time he heard the doubters was against his last opponent, Martin Kampmann. It took 34 seconds more, but it had a near-identical conclusion

“As soon as I hit him, the first thing I thought about was the ‘lucky punch’ that everybody thought I had, and that everyone was saying that he’d been hit by some of the toughest guys and that no one could knock him out. That sort of stuck in my mind. I’d trained with Kampmann and I knew he was tough, but whenever you go out there, hit somebody and then they stiffen up, it’s always been a beautiful sight.”

Now with the likes of Kampmann, Josh Koscheck and Fitch all on his defeated list, Hendricks has the current welterweight champ in his sights. However, there’s men called Nick Diaz (former Strikeforce 170lb champ) and Anderson Silva (UFC middleweight kingpin) standing in front of him.

“It is becoming quite annoying that people keep on passing over me for a fight with GSP, but, like I always say, if God wants me to fight him then it’s going to happen. If I can’t control it, then why bother worrying about it? All I can do is keep campaigning to get the shot.

“Everyone is worrying about Anderson, but there’s a chance that I could knock out GSP. That’s something that I believe the fans want to see. They want to see a guy in his weight class finish GSP. To know that fans are even starting to believe in me like that is even sweeter to me.”

The UFC welterweight division according to Hendricks

“It’s completely different compared to what it was a year and a half ago, completely different from the time that GSP got hurt and the time he came back. New people are going to have shots against GSP, and if the Anderson Silva fight had have happened two years ago then it would’ve been OK.

“To do (Anderson Silva vs Georges St-Pierre) now would hold up the (welterweight) division and it’s already nearly impossible to get a title shot, because you have to go through some of the toughest guys in the world. There’s a whole new wave of fighters coming through, and I know that there should be superfights and I know that people want to see that, but I’d rather see Anderson Silva vs Jon Jones. That’s the fight I think would be huge.”

Johny Hendricks: Timeline

• 1983: Born Johny Harvey Hendricks on September 12th 1983.
• 2001: Racked up a 101-5 record in wrestling during high school. He was a three-time state and regional champion and a national champion.
• 2002: Won USA Junior Freestyle Championship at 165lb in 2001 and 2002.
• 2003: Joined the Oklahoma State wrestling team and gained a perfect 10-0 record for the year.
• 2004: Took fifth place at the NCAA championships, ending the year with a 44-7 record.
• 2005: Beat welterweight hopeful Tyron Woodley to claim his first Big 12 championship, and took the NCAA Division I title at 165lb.
• 2006: Won the NCAA 165lb title for the second year running.
• 2007: Took second at the NCAA finals and graduated from OSU with majors in education and as the university’s 19th all-time best wrestler. Moved to Las Vegas and signed with Team Takedown.
• September 2007: Made his professional MMA debut against Victor Rackliff in Oklahoma-based fight promotion Masters of the Cage. Won by TKO due to punches in the third round.
• March 2008: Fought Richard Gamble in Xtreme Fight League. His first televised fight and his first and only submission win – Hendricks sunk in a D’Arce choke in round one.
• December 2008: Made his debut for the 
• now-defunct WEC against Justin Haskins and continued his streak of finishes with a second-round TKO.
• March 2009: Went the distance for the first time in his professional career in the final ever WEC welterweight fight, decisioning Alex Serdyukov.
• December 2009: Ragdolled Ricardo Funch for three rounds at UFC 107, showing everyone his wrestling skills in a clear-cut three-round decision.
• August 2010: Clashed with Charlie Brenneman at UFC 117. After a back-and-forth first, Hendricks added another finish to his record in the second.
• December 2010: At the TUF 12 Finale Rick ‘The Horror’ Story hands Hendricks his first loss, via unanimous decision.
• December 2011: Entered UFC 141 opposite Jon Fitch as an underdog, only to come away with an extremely impressive 12-second upset knockout.    
• May 2012: Fought against longtime contender Josh Koscheck and won a split decision, defeating a second consensus top-10 fighter.   
• November 2012: KO’d Martin Kampmann in 46 seconds at UFC 154.