Benson Henderson Says Losses Stay With Him Forever

Benson Henderson spoke with MMAjunkie about his fight with Patricio Freire at Bellator 160 and more. Some highlights are below:

On getting offered a fight against the winner of Michael Chandler vs. Patricky Freire: “Right after the loss to Andrey, three days later, shortly after, (Bellator Matchmaker) Mike Kogan hit me up and said hey, ‘Do you want to go to 155?’ At the time they were still up in the air who was going to fight for the belt, and once they decided it was going to be Chandler vs. the Big Pitbull (Patricky Freire), they said ‘Do you want the winner of that?’ I said ‘Sure, of course, absolutely, man.’ But then, after the fight, they realized, you know, the way the fight game goes, Chandler’s hand was hurt. They said, ‘Do you want to sit around and wait? Do you want to wait for Chandler’s hand to heal up or do you want to fight somebody else?’ I was like, ‘Come on Mike, you already know the answer to that. He kind of chuckled, like ‘Yeah, yeah I know. I knew the answer to that before I even asked it.’”

On being a former champion: “You hope at some point in time you reach a point in your career not everything’s an extreme uphill battle just to get some of the recognition you feel you’re due. It’s all about working your butt off. I think if you work your butt off, you actually do your diligence, go out and do your best. A lot of times, you keep at it, you keep at it, you keep at it, you end up – good things happening. Being in a good spot later on in life. And I think I’m at a pretty good spot right now. Reaching that point in your career where you’re able to get a title shot coming over to a new organization right away, even coming off a hard, tough loss at 170 you get a title shot at 155, but Chandler being hurt, it was a blessing for sure.”

On his loss to Andrey Koreshkov: “For me, personally, I can say (losses) definitely stay with me forever. I don’t like losing, I hate losing, I cannot stand it. Every single loss on my record, I would like to redo that. Let’s matchup again, I think I can get my hand raised against every single person I have lost against.”