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Anthony Henry Wants To Compete At Bloodsport III

November 18, 2019 | Posted by Jeremy Lambert

– Anthony Henry recently spoke to Fightful about his MMA background, competing at Bloodsport, and more. Highlights are below.

On Competing At Bloodsport: “I’m a fan of the ‘shoot style.’ It’s pretty well known that I come from a MMA background and I had amateur fights and pro fights before giving up that part of my career. [Bloodsport] is a natural fit for me. They were putting together their next event and I know I was recommended by a few people. I got hit up and I sent my stuff to [GCW promoter] Brett Lauderdale and he sent it over to Josh Barnett. Josh is very in control of [the event]. He wanted to make sure everybody on the event had some legitimacy to them. He viewed my footage and from there, I got added on.”

Early Memories Of MMA: “If I had the opportunity to choose who I was in there with, I would love to go in there with someone like [Kazushi] Sakuraba. Some of my early memories of watching MMA was getting the PRIDE DVDs and being amazed by Sakuraba and the entertainment and showman factor added to his fights. He’s a legend. If you think about Sakuraba, in his prime, he was undersized for the division he was fighting in. He was fighting guys like Wanderlei Silva who probably out-weighed him by 25-30 pounds. Once the skill has leveled out, size and other factors come into play. Sakuraba doesn’t have the best win-loss record, but he was competitive against guys who were bigger than him.”

On Wrestling And MMA Comparisons: “I would get UFC videos and WWE videos and watch them together. I knew [UFC] was real and [WWE] was staged, but for me, it was all the same. I enjoyed both. It’s a natural evolution for some of these guys to get involved in pro wrestling. They’re not that dissimilar. If you watch MMA, most of them are cutting promos like wrestlers. There’s an entertainment component that you can’t deny. They’re not so foreign from each other. With people being so exposed to MMA, we now know an armbar is an armbar, a choke is a choke. Those elements are also involved in pro wrestling now. It’s a good thing that we have those components added in.”

article topics :

Anthony Henry, Jeremy Lambert