This coming Saturday night, a battle of former champions will take place at UFC 199 as Dan Henderson meets Hector Lombard.
While both have found success inside the Octagon, they rose to prominence and earned gold in other promotions. Henderson won the Strikeforce title before returning to the UFC, while Lombard left Bellator having never lost the belt.
As veterans of the sport, one would think there would be a mutual respect going into Saturday’s battle. But that’s not the case as far as Lombard is concerned, as he explained during a recent appearance on Submission Radio.
“Dan Henderson is just fake. Fake guy, comes across like a nice guy when he’s not. If somebody comes to my training camp and wants to train – you know if one day I have, let’s suppose that I have a Hector Lombard training camp or Hector Lombard facility, and some young guy (comes in to train) – cause trust me, even at ATT a bunch of guys came from Australia and I introduced myself. Like, “hey man how are you doing?”.
“I tell them “whatever you need, just give me a call”. I exchange numbers, you know, we talk quite a bit, we go, we do some training together. It’s not a big deal, ey? This (expletive) is kind of like “oh, I’m more than you”. So he doesn’t care for me and I don’t care for him either.”
Lombard also mentioned that he wants to move up to light heavyweight soon, adding that his plan is to “whoop Tim Boetsch” at that division. Boetsch earned a 2012 split decision over Lombard in his UFC debut.