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Ben Henderson Bests Donald Cerrone In WEC Epic

by Ross Everett on November 11, 2009

The oldest fight sport adage in the world is ’styles make fights’. For that reason, no one knew quite what to expect in Saturday’s WEC Interim Lightweight Championship battle between Donald Cerrone and Ben Henderson. Henderson was known for his dominating wrestling skills, while Cerrone has a reputation as a punishing striker. Instead of being a clash of styles, but, it was an instance where the differing approaches of the two competitors complimented each other perfectly. The result was a ‘fight of the year’ candidate bout that Henderson won by unanimous-choice.

Henderson opened the fight with a takedown, but quickly got caught in a guillotine choke attempt. He extricated himself from this quandary only to find himself in a triangle choke that appeared for a moment to be a potential fight ending submission. That would not be the case, but, and Henderson would take control in the last half of the round with his powerful takedowns and ‘ground and pound’ punching assault.

Rounds two and three were all Henderson, as he took Cerrone down nearly at will and started to pummel him on the ground. Cerrone managed a couple of submission attempts from the bottom, and did what he could to keep Henderson off of him with upkicks but nowhere near enough to salvage either round.

The tide would turn again in the fourth round, as Cerrone started to time Henderson’s takedown attempts. He became much more hard to get to the ground, as well as administering punishment of his own after stuffing takedowns with punches and knee strikes. Later in the frame, Cerrone came close to ending the fight when he locked in a nasty and unorthodox choke that WEC commentator Frank Mir described as ‘nearly an inverted rear naked choke’. After some tense moments, Henderson was able to escape. Cerrone would also control the final round, evading Henderson’s takedowns while scoring with his striking. He had another potential fight ending submission attempt in the fifth round, as he locked in an arm bar and appeared to have excellent leverage as he twisted Henderson’s arm into a nasty angle. Nevertheless, Henderson was able to escape and end off the fight.

The choice itself was somewhat surprising, with Henderson winning all three judges’ scorecards by identical 48-47 scores. He’d clearly won rounds two and three, while Cerrone was the obvious winner of rounds four and five. This meant that all three judges had given the edge to Henderson in the first round, favoring Henderson’s punching attack over Cerrone’s submission attempts.

Henderson will now face WEC Lightweight Champion Jamie Varner to unify the titles. Varner entered the cage after the choice was announced to ‘cut a promo’ on the winner, and suggested the fight take place in December in Phoenix, Arizona though neither the date nor venue has been finalized.

Ross Everett is a consulting handicapper for Sports-1 Sportsbook as well as a widely published freelance writer specializing in MMA, boxing and how to bet on NFL football. He is a well known authority on Internet sports betting, fine dining and fencing. He lives in southern Nevada with three Jack Russell Terriers and a pet wallaby.