Dan Henderson on MMA's Early Days, Pride FC, Fighting Through Injuries and His Memoir

High-Level Overview

On this JRE MMA Show, Joe Rogan catches up with Dan Henderson, the two-time Olympic wrestler turned MMA legend who fought for about 20 years across the UFC, Pride and Strikeforce. Now retired, coaching and building a brewery, distillery and restaurant in the building that houses his gym in Temecula, California, Henderson looks back on the sport's wild early days. He fought his first four MMA bouts without ever sparring, won a one-night tournament on an injured knee for a $200,000 prize, and took a Pride fight two and a half months after ACL surgery. He was promoting his new memoir, Hendo: The American Athlete.

The tone is relaxed and nostalgic, with plenty of laughter. Henderson is understated about his achievements, even protesting the word "pioneer," while Joe keeps insisting there's no better word for it. The conversation moves from bowhunting and elk hearts to fight history, training philosophy, performance-enhancing drugs, fighter pay and current matchups, with a detour into COVID lockdowns, politics and the media.

The Discussion Explores:

• Bowhunting elk as a discipline that rivals the intensity of fighting
• How Henderson got into MMA and fought without sparring
• Fighting through a broken hand, a torn knee and dislocated thumbs
• Winning the Rings King of Kings tournament and the money it meant
• Pride's spectacle, short-notice fights and drug testing
• TRT, aging and how he adjusted training camps
• Sparring philosophies, from Sean Strickland to Max Holloway
• Fighter pay, competition between promotions and his memoir

Deep Dive into Main Ideas

Bowhunting and Life After Fighting

The episode opens with elk season. Joe describes preparing by shooting in his yard for three hours a day in 105-degree heat, practicing at 100 yards so that his 50-yard shot on an elk felt easy. Henderson says his first bow kill was an elk at about 10 feet after calling it in within a burn area. Joe says bowhunting is a great discipline for fighters because it's one of the few things that comes close to the intensity of fighting. Henderson agrees it's the best way to get meat and to decompress, and says he ate the elk's heart the night before, fried in butter, and eats liver with eggs for breakfast, which Joe admits he can't do.

Henderson says he adapted well to retirement. He started wrestling at five, made two Olympic teams and then fought for 20 years, so "I feel like I did enough." He retired while his body still felt okay, mainly because training camps left him too tired to spend time with his kids. He doesn't plan a comeback, joking that "nobody's offered me enough money to get off the couch anyway," though he admits bare-knuckle rules with dirty boxing and clinching would suit him. Joe praises bare-knuckle boxing and bare-knuckle MMA, noting Mike Perry's success and arguing that gloves mostly protect a fighter's hands and may let people punch harder.

Getting Into MMA With No Sparring

Henderson and Randy Couture were longtime wrestling training partners. About two weeks before an event in Brazil, Couture invited him to enter a lightweight tournament there. Henderson won that 1997 tournament mainly to make money to keep wrestling, and then fought at UFC 17 in 1998, where Joe interviewed him backstage. Remarkably, he had never sparred before any of his first four MMA fights. It was, he says, "just kind of awkward to punch your friend in the face." Afterwards they realized they needed to spar. There were no real MMA coaches then; he credits Pat Miletich and Matt Hume as among the first to put it all together.

They discuss early wrestlers in MMA and Frank Shamrock, whom Joe calls one of the first fighters with a full MMA game and cardio as a weapon. Henderson says Carlos Newton broke his jaw late in their fight. On his punching power, he credits baseball: he threw hard as a kid, and when he started hitting focus mitts people told him he hit hard. Joe notes Takanori Gomi also started as a pitcher and says power seems partly natural mechanics and frame.

Fighting Through Injuries

Henderson broke his hand in the first round against Vanderlei Silva and never thought about it again for the rest of the fight thanks to adrenaline. Most striking, Pride called him while he was elk hunting in Colorado and asked him to fight Murilo Bustamante about a week later, just two and a half months after ACL reconstruction. Without a contract and worried about his future with the promotion, he agreed on the condition they pay his win bonus either way, then knocked Bustamante out quickly with a knee. In the week of training beforehand he dislocated his thumb, whose ligament he says is still gone, and in the fight he jammed his other thumb so badly that he "had no thumbs for like a week." He adds that a cadaver graft on his right knee recovered in six months, while a patellar tendon graft on the left took about a year.

The Rings Tournament and $200,000

Henderson calls his toughest night the 2000 Rings King of Kings tournament, a 32-man openweight event. He fought Gilbert Yvel, then Antônio Rodrigo Nogueira, who jumped guard and landed on his leg, hurting his knee, then had only about 20 to 25 minutes before the final against Renato Sobral, both opponents roughly 40 pounds heavier and undefeated by submission to that point. The money made the difference: the most he had ever earned was about $20,000 for a UFC fight the year before, and this final was basically winner take all. Second place would have meant about $30,000 total for five fights; winning meant about $230,000. He recalls that when "they played the national anthem beforehand I got me pumped up," and so did "the thought of 200,000 dollars."

Joe says he'd love to see one-night tournaments return, perhaps with alternates who also fight that night, and floats alternatives like 15-minute rounds. Henderson liked Pride's 10-minute first round, saying it "separated the men from the boys," and both like the idea of restarting a round from the position where the last one ended, or three eight-minute rounds. They discuss his five-round war with Shogun Rua, which fans found chaotic but Henderson says he felt he had won, knowing Rua couldn't finish him even while mounted.

Pride's Spectacle and PEDs

Henderson says he often expected to fight on Pride's big New Year's Eve cards and describes short-notice fights, including against Nogueira on 10 days' notice. He fought in front of crowds around 65,000 to 70,000 and says the pageantry, opening ceremonies and walkouts made Pride unmatched as a show, even if the fighters were comparable to the UFC. Joe calls fighters like Mirko Cro Cop and Fedor Emelianenko in their Pride primes among the scariest ever, while noting many fighters left their best days there.

On drugs, Henderson says Pride did urine tests but he doesn't know what they tested for, and when he asked about it he was told that if they did, he and Nogueira would be the only fighters they'd have. Henderson was the first to use testosterone replacement therapy with a commission-approved prescription and says he tested himself once or twice every camp so he could show he wasn't abusing it, but he believes others did. When TRT exemptions ended he simply stopped, saying "a lot of that shit's in your head anyway," though in his early to mid-forties he felt age affect recovery and lengthened camps by about three weeks, easing in and then shortening practices while raising intensity.

How to Train: Sparring Philosophies

Henderson's approach was one hard sparring day a week, a technical sparring day with big gloves, and lighter MMA-glove work otherwise, trying "not to beat your brain up too much." He admits he used to drop training partners by accident before learning control, and now tells students not to go slow-motion or hard, but fast and light. Joe contrasts Sean Strickland, who trained at Henderson's gym for about three years and spars almost daily, with Max Holloway, who no longer spars to stay fresh. Henderson liked having Strickland in the gym as a training partner who made everyone go hard, but says others found him disrespectful. He had urged Strickland to move up to 185 pounds, and both praise his defense, pressure and cardio in his recent win over Israel Adesanya. The takeaway, Joe says, is that there is no single perfect way; it depends on the athlete.

Rivalries, Pay and Promotions

Joe calls Henderson's knockout of Héctor Lombard, a head kick followed by elbows, one of his wildest. Henderson reveals it was personal: Lombard trained at his gym for about three months and his teammates considered him a bully who tried to hurt people during warm-ups. When Lombard challenged him about it at the face-off, Henderson decided "I'm gonna fuck you up," calling it probably the only fight where he felt that way. Joe marvels that Henderson's logo depicts his flying punch finish of Michael Bisping.

On money, Henderson says he should have earned about three to three and a half million dollars for the first Bisping fight through pay-per-view points, but when the card was reshuffled he was moved to the third spot, still promoted as a co-main event, and paid no pay-per-view share, receiving roughly $300,000. The most he made for a single fight was around a million under a multi-fight deal. He says he never got one of the famous locker-room bonuses beyond a knockout of the night. He left for Strikeforce, praising Scott Coker for having the fighters in mind, and both agree that competing promotions like the PFL, which bought Bellator, and ONE Championship are good for fighters and for the UFC.

Detours: Politics, COVID and the Media

Midway through, the conversation turns to current events. Joe says the state of the world, from Ukraine to the Middle East, scares him more than ever. They criticize COVID lockdowns in California; Henderson says he closed his gym for only six weeks because his county sheriff refused to enforce the governor's orders, and Joe explains his family's move to Texas. Joe argues officials' pay should reflect the economic outcomes of their decisions, and both lament a polarized media they feel no longer offers an objective source, with Joe citing CNN's low ratings. Henderson says he never cared much about politics, having spent his life focused on wrestling and fighting.

Looking Ahead: Jones vs. Miocic and the Memoir

On the upcoming Jon Jones versus Stipe Miocic fight, which Henderson plans to attend in New York, he says it's a tough call. Miocic's wrestling makes him a harder matchup for Jones than big punchers, but he thinks Jones's length and unpredictability could carry him. He says Jones hasn't looked the same since his positive tests. Joe argues Jones was often under-challenged and notes Miocic has had two years to recover after being knocked out by Francis Ngannou. On recovery, Henderson says he relied on sauna, long massages and occasional ice baths, and now does hormone replacement and peptides, and they criticize efforts to restrict recovery peptides like BPC-157.

Henderson says writing Hendo: The American Athlete, named after what the Japanese media called him, made him reflect on his life for the first time, and it brought back forgotten stories. He tried recording the audiobook himself but laughed so hard listening back with his wife that a professional will narrate it. Producer Barry Josephson is interested in a biopic, though Henderson worries a two-hour movie would distort his life, as Foxcatcher did with Mark Schultz, and prefers a limited series. Joe reads his own blurb from the book's back cover and signs off calling Henderson a legend.

Conclusion

Dan Henderson's stories capture how raw early MMA was: Olympic wrestlers fighting with no sparring, tournaments on injured knees for life-changing money, and fights taken on days' notice after surgery. His reflections on smart sparring, aging, PEDs, fighter pay and the value of competing promotions show how much the sport has evolved, while his humility and humor make him a good-natured guide to that history. For fans of combat sports, the episode is both a nostalgic trip through the Pride and early UFC era and a good introduction to his memoir, Hendo: The American Athlete.

This is a summary of "JRE MMA Show #149 with Dan Henderson" from The Joe Rogan Experience, giving you the GIST so you can decide if you want the REST. Listen to the full episode.