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UFC Fight Night: Lewis vs. Browne – Johny Hendricks vs Hector Lombard Toe to Toe Preview
Phil and David break down everything you need to know about Hendricks vs. Lombard for UFN in Canada, and everything you don’t about hitting rock bottom.
Hendricks and Lombard try to get their careers back on track this February 19, 2017 at the Scotiabank Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Single sentence summary
Phil: Stumpy power punchers try to hold onto the last of their tattered hype as they battle in the land of the giants.
David: Rock turned paper, meets scissors turned paper in a middleweight facepunching contest made of paper mache.
David: Perhaps the first thing to note is that Johny Hendricks, has in fact, made weight. It offered perhaps my favorite Twitter reply, which was that ‘the UFC told him he has 2 hours to miss weight’. With the weight factor out the way, Hendricks can build on something more stable than wherever his head has been for the last three bouts. At 2-5 in his last seven, there’s not exactly room for error. Especially when he’s missed weight so many times. Hendricks used to be a modest folk hero, of sorts, to MMA fans. A neo-Matt Hughes. A Southern iron fist with zero knowledge of steakhouse preparation. Now he’s just kind of slithering around at Franklin-weight amidst an uncertain future. When did it all go wrong? When he insisted on knowing the difference between WADA and VADA? And can be recover from sudden but full blown mediocrity?
Phil: The sheer scope of the demo job on Hendricks’ career has been surprising. Sometimes fighters physically decline, sometimes they lose cachet with the fans, rarely do they do both, and almost never do they do both to the extent that their past career achievements start to fade from history. I mean, Anderson and Wanderlei both did significant damage to their legacies by combining drug test failures with going crazy, but Hendricks has managed to outdo them in becoming the forgotten man of MMA history. His championship is seen as a footnote between the legend of GSP and the thrilling run of Lawler, despite the fact that most people had him going 3-0 against them. Remember his 3(!) first-ballot fight of the year contenders against Condit, Lawler and GSP? It seems like folk just don’t care any more.
David: I didn’t realize how deep the doodoo was both fighters were stuck in until I remembered that Lombard hasn’t officially won a fight since 2014. And he was last seen getting knocked out by Dan Henderson in a rather “amorphous” bout. Even though Cubans typically defy the genetics of aging like a full grown pissed off HeLa cell, I can’t help but suspect that Lombard may finally be slowing down due to age. He just turned 39, and even though he’s still an offensive nightmare for opponents, two TKO losses sounds like a trend against a fighter who had always been known for his durability.
Phil: Lombard’s UFC career has been one of modest ups and sizable downs. That debut against Boetsch was awful, even though I thought he won. He seemed like he’d put it all together with that Shields win, which survives on his ledger as his best victory and also, as you alluded to, his last. Since then it’s been a drug test failure and those two losses. The weird thing is that none of his losses felt out of reach – he almost stopped Magny and Henderson, for example – yet there’s still a clear path of decline.
What’s at stake?
David: Dignity I guess. Both guys need wins, and they need them desperately. Both have lost fights due to poor decisions, inside and outside the cage. They say it’s always darkest before the dawn, but their recent exploits make it seem like they wouldn’t know the difference; victims of a Rayleigh Scattering experiment gone wrong, it’s hard to even imagine a win setting them for a future success that they’ve already squandered.
Phil: It’s a “who’s the biggest bust” competition, one which you win by losing the fight. Whoever comes out the victor likely gets to go test their might against actual middleweights who have about a foot of reach on either man.
Where do they want it?
David: Hendricks used to be a kind of Matt Hughes with movement and speed. His ability to pivot, and shift forward for punches to overcome the height gap were effective, even innovative ways for him to foster a well earned reputation as one of welterweight’s premiere meta-strikers. I was told people that use the word “meta” in a sentence are those that pretend to sound smart in the comments section one time, so let me explain in a sentence or two. Hendricks was a meta-striker insofar as he was not a striker via trade, but a striker via utility against the format of the division (which was traditionally grapple-heavy). Calling someone a “grappler” or “striker” are useless definitions in most cases, so it helps to label them in a way that speaks to the layers they rely on.
Anyway, Hendricks used to be that violent Southpaw we all knew and respected so long as he was going 80%. Now he struggles just to hold up a pair of four ounce gloves. The weight cutting has affected his movement, who used to define his ability to land strikes, and a durability that once defined his intangibles. Now he just trudges along, hoping his opponent will give him enough room to breathe and rerack. As a result, it’s a created a domino effect of struggles, hindering his ability to score takedowns as well. It’s a tough fight for him, to say the very least.
Phil: “Where do they want it” is a good, salient question for this fight, because I’m increasingly convinced that Hendricks just does not “want it” at all. Questions about motivation are often looked at as secondary to physical decline, but Hendricks has often struck me as someone who needs to be fired up to get the best out of himself, and for whatever reason (weight, a damaging career, external issues) just can’t do it any more. There’s always been a sullen, sour streak in him, and it feels like that’s been overwhelming him of late; like he’s doing MMA because he knows that in an objective sense that he is good at it, and because he still enjoys parts of it, but when the cage door closes the strongest emotion you get from him is a tight, restrictive frustration. .
His ability to step into the pocket, parse what was going on, and manipulate his opponent’s rhythm has disappeared, leaving him an undersized, one-handed fighter who has to blitz through that space into the clinch. His phase-shifting has, as you pointed out, largely disappeared, leaving him trying to win entire bouts as only a wrestler; regressing to his base.
David: Lombard, like Hendricks, takes a clearly defined top down approach to fighting. He’s got punching power, so he works whatever tactical angle he can to land strikes. The problem with Lombard, even when he was thought of as a John Wick type figure, is that has a finite number of ways to angling for punches. His Judo is a wonderful asset that helps, but on the feet he relies on his raw speed to whip that right hook of his around to catch opponents, following it up with the standard assort of combinations. He has the base of a brickhouse, making him difficult to approach. He’s a rare breed of fighter whose sheer force of presence allows him to do things many fighters simply can’t get away with, like stalking forward with his head bolted upright.
Phil: Lombard feels like a fighter with an approach which has been tuned to counter a couple of specific approaches- opponents who rush him, and grapplers. He stalks forward and counters incoming opponents with the left cross or the right hook, and that aforementioned Judo base makes him extraordinarily difficult to move with shot or upper body takedowns (although Okami had some success with the single leg).
A notable weakness that Lombard shares with Hendricks is that he’s not great defensively- his head is relatively immobile, and he favours catch-and-pitch counters where he’ll parry an incoming strike and then crash back in with a hard shot, but fighters with developed jabs have been able to slip them past his hands. His other and more damning weakness is, of course, his cardio. Like his countryman Romero, he can conserve his tank by fighting at a slower pace, but his comparatively poor defense makes taking time off in fights far more risky.
Insight from past fights
Phil: When did Johny Hendricks last look good on the feet? This is why I return to the motivation issue again and again, because I think that that his level of enjoyment has specifically driven his ability to strike. He looked good on the feet for portions in the last Lawler fight, but also spent time pushing for meaningless takedowns. He wrestled Brown. Against Gastelum, he woke up briefly in the third, but otherwise looked beyond inert while striking.
David: We can probably pick from five different bouts from each man to point out where things can go completely off the rails. No one fight really does justice to their level of lurch pugilism.
X-Factors
Phil: Will either or both of these guys be revived by not taking a sizable weight cut? I have a sneaking suspicion that Hendricks will have eaten himself into having to take a big cut anyway, but if Hendricks can find some enjoyment for the game again, then we might see a surprising improvement.
David: The good news, I guess, is that there’s a good chance they’ve probably already hit their career nadirs. Especially Hendricks.
Prognostication
Phil: I can’t believe in Johny Hendricks at the moment. He seems to be more and more of a power wrestler and not much else, and I don’t think that’s a good style for taking on Lombard at all. If he goes for a lot of takedowns I think he fails on a lot of them, and Lombard will fade in the third, too late for Hendricks to prevent an underwhelming decision loss. Hector Lombard by unanimous decision.
David: Part of the problem with Hendricks is that he’s been bad, even before he started turning into the shell of his former self that he is now, with telegraphing his takedowns. I can’t imagine Lombard NOT reversing him like folded laundry for an extended ground and pound counterattack. There are just too many ways for Hendricks to lose this fight, and his greatest hope is cramming offense in the third where he have even worse cardio than Lombard. Hector Lombard by TKO, round 2.
Phil and David break down everything you need to know about Hendricks vs. Lombard for UFN in Canada, and everything you don’t about hitting rock bottom.
Hendricks and Lombard try to get their careers back on track this February 19, 2017 at the Scotiabank Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Single sentence summary
Phil: Stumpy power punchers try to hold onto the last of their tattered hype as they battle in the land of the giants.
David: Rock turned paper, meets scissors turned paper in a middleweight facepunching contest made of paper mache.
David: Perhaps the first thing to note is that Johny Hendricks, has in fact, made weight. It offered perhaps my favorite Twitter reply, which was that ‘the UFC told him he has 2 hours to miss weight’. With the weight factor out the way, Hendricks can build on something more stable than wherever his head has been for the last three bouts. At 2-5 in his last seven, there’s not exactly room for error. Especially when he’s missed weight so many times. Hendricks used to be a modest folk hero, of sorts, to MMA fans. A neo-Matt Hughes. A Southern iron fist with zero knowledge of steakhouse preparation. Now he’s just kind of slithering around at Franklin-weight amidst an uncertain future. When did it all go wrong? When he insisted on knowing the difference between WADA and VADA? And can be recover from sudden but full blown mediocrity?
Phil: The sheer scope of the demo job on Hendricks’ career has been surprising. Sometimes fighters physically decline, sometimes they lose cachet with the fans, rarely do they do both, and almost never do they do both to the extent that their past career achievements start to fade from history. I mean, Anderson and Wanderlei both did significant damage to their legacies by combining drug test failures with going crazy, but Hendricks has managed to outdo them in becoming the forgotten man of MMA history. His championship is seen as a footnote between the legend of GSP and the thrilling run of Lawler, despite the fact that most people had him going 3-0 against them. Remember his 3(!) first-ballot fight of the year contenders against Condit, Lawler and GSP? It seems like folk just don’t care any more.
David: I didn’t realize how deep the doodoo was both fighters were stuck in until I remembered that Lombard hasn’t officially won a fight since 2014. And he was last seen getting knocked out by Dan Henderson in a rather “amorphous” bout. Even though Cubans typically defy the genetics of aging like a full grown pissed off HeLa cell, I can’t help but suspect that Lombard may finally be slowing down due to age. He just turned 39, and even though he’s still an offensive nightmare for opponents, two TKO losses sounds like a trend against a fighter who had always been known for his durability.
Phil: Lombard’s UFC career has been one of modest ups and sizable downs. That debut against Boetsch was awful, even though I thought he won. He seemed like he’d put it all together with that Shields win, which survives on his ledger as his best victory and also, as you alluded to, his last. Since then it’s been a drug test failure and those two losses. The weird thing is that none of his losses felt out of reach – he almost stopped Magny and Henderson, for example – yet there’s still a clear path of decline.
What’s at stake?
David: Dignity I guess. Both guys need wins, and they need them desperately. Both have lost fights due to poor decisions, inside and outside the cage. They say it’s always darkest before the dawn, but their recent exploits make it seem like they wouldn’t know the difference; victims of a Rayleigh Scattering experiment gone wrong, it’s hard to even imagine a win setting them for a future success that they’ve already squandered.
Phil: It’s a “who’s the biggest bust” competition, one which you win by losing the fight. Whoever comes out the victor likely gets to go test their might against actual middleweights who have about a foot of reach on either man.
Where do they want it?
David: Hendricks used to be a kind of Matt Hughes with movement and speed. His ability to pivot, and shift forward for punches to overcome the height gap were effective, even innovative ways for him to foster a well earned reputation as one of welterweight’s premiere meta-strikers. I was told people that use the word “meta” in a sentence are those that pretend to sound smart in the comments section one time, so let me explain in a sentence or two. Hendricks was a meta-striker insofar as he was not a striker via trade, but a striker via utility against the format of the division (which was traditionally grapple-heavy). Calling someone a “grappler” or “striker” are useless definitions in most cases, so it helps to label them in a way that speaks to the layers they rely on.
Anyway, Hendricks used to be that violent Southpaw we all knew and respected so long as he was going 80%. Now he struggles just to hold up a pair of four ounce gloves. The weight cutting has affected his movement, who used to define his ability to land strikes, and a durability that once defined his intangibles. Now he just trudges along, hoping his opponent will give him enough room to breathe and rerack. As a result, it’s a created a domino effect of struggles, hindering his ability to score takedowns as well. It’s a tough fight for him, to say the very least.
Phil: “Where do they want it” is a good, salient question for this fight, because I’m increasingly convinced that Hendricks just does not “want it” at all. Questions about motivation are often looked at as secondary to physical decline, but Hendricks has often struck me as someone who needs to be fired up to get the best out of himself, and for whatever reason (weight, a damaging career, external issues) just can’t do it any more. There’s always been a sullen, sour streak in him, and it feels like that’s been overwhelming him of late; like he’s doing MMA because he knows that in an objective sense that he is good at it, and because he still enjoys parts of it, but when the cage door closes the strongest emotion you get from him is a tight, restrictive frustration. .
His ability to step into the pocket, parse what was going on, and manipulate his opponent’s rhythm has disappeared, leaving him an undersized, one-handed fighter who has to blitz through that space into the clinch. His phase-shifting has, as you pointed out, largely disappeared, leaving him trying to win entire bouts as only a wrestler; regressing to his base.
David: Lombard, like Hendricks, takes a clearly defined top down approach to fighting. He’s got punching power, so he works whatever tactical angle he can to land strikes. The problem with Lombard, even when he was thought of as a John Wick type figure, is that has a finite number of ways to angling for punches. His Judo is a wonderful asset that helps, but on the feet he relies on his raw speed to whip that right hook of his around to catch opponents, following it up with the standard assort of combinations. He has the base of a brickhouse, making him difficult to approach. He’s a rare breed of fighter whose sheer force of presence allows him to do things many fighters simply can’t get away with, like stalking forward with his head bolted upright.
Phil: Lombard feels like a fighter with an approach which has been tuned to counter a couple of specific approaches- opponents who rush him, and grapplers. He stalks forward and counters incoming opponents with the left cross or the right hook, and that aforementioned Judo base makes him extraordinarily difficult to move with shot or upper body takedowns (although Okami had some success with the single leg).
A notable weakness that Lombard shares with Hendricks is that he’s not great defensively- his head is relatively immobile, and he favours catch-and-pitch counters where he’ll parry an incoming strike and then crash back in with a hard shot, but fighters with developed jabs have been able to slip them past his hands. His other and more damning weakness is, of course, his cardio. Like his countryman Romero, he can conserve his tank by fighting at a slower pace, but his comparatively poor defense makes taking time off in fights far more risky.
Insight from past fights
Phil: When did Johny Hendricks last look good on the feet? This is why I return to the motivation issue again and again, because I think that that his level of enjoyment has specifically driven his ability to strike. He looked good on the feet for portions in the last Lawler fight, but also spent time pushing for meaningless takedowns. He wrestled Brown. Against Gastelum, he woke up briefly in the third, but otherwise looked beyond inert while striking.
David: We can probably pick from five different bouts from each man to point out where things can go completely off the rails. No one fight really does justice to their level of lurch pugilism.
X-Factors
Phil: Will either or both of these guys be revived by not taking a sizable weight cut? I have a sneaking suspicion that Hendricks will have eaten himself into having to take a big cut anyway, but if Hendricks can find some enjoyment for the game again, then we might see a surprising improvement.
David: The good news, I guess, is that there’s a good chance they’ve probably already hit their career nadirs. Especially Hendricks.
Prognostication
Phil: I can’t believe in Johny Hendricks at the moment. He seems to be more and more of a power wrestler and not much else, and I don’t think that’s a good style for taking on Lombard at all. If he goes for a lot of takedowns I think he fails on a lot of them, and Lombard will fade in the third, too late for Hendricks to prevent an underwhelming decision loss. Hector Lombard by unanimous decision.
David: Part of the problem with Hendricks is that he’s been bad, even before he started turning into the shell of his former self that he is now, with telegraphing his takedowns. I can’t imagine Lombard NOT reversing him like folded laundry for an extended ground and pound counterattack. There are just too many ways for Hendricks to lose this fight, and his greatest hope is cramming offense in the third where he have even worse cardio than Lombard. Hector Lombard by TKO, round 2.
