Lightweight Ben “Smooth” Henderson (12-1) is prepared to step into the cage tonight for the last time as the WEC lightweight champion, he faces a tough opponent in Anthony “Showtime” Pettis (11-1) in the main event of the very last World Extreme Cagefighting event, WEC 53: Henderson vs. Pettis.
The winner will move on to take the #1 contender position and will face off against the UFC lightweight champ in a unification bout sometime in the future.
Henderson looks as this bout as “just another fight” but wants to look back at this fight, as well as the rest of his career so far, as a stepping stone to improvement.
“I like having more time between my fights. If it were up to me, I’d have it like this every time. I’m not one of those guys that want to fight six or seven times a year. I’m still getting started in this MMA thing; November was four years (competing as a professional) and I have a long way to go still. I can get a lot better – in my boxing, in my kickboxing, in everything – and you can’t get better if you’re just going from training camp to training camp to training camp. You need time in between your fights to actually get better. I want to improve; every time I step into the cage, I want to be better than the last time I stepped into the cage. So I want that time to get better and show improvement. I don’t want to be the same fighter in 2011 that I was now. That’s not going to be me.”
HT: Heavy.com