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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
"My thing with the whole steroid thing and whatnot - like I understand part of a competitors nature is to take whatever edge, whatever advantage you can get to be the best. To that I just say if I'm facing a person - it happened in college wrestling, sadly it shouldn't, but it happened in college wrestling people on steroids and whatnot - but if I know someone is mentally weak enough to take steroids, ‘Oh, I need the extra edge, I need to do this,' and they know it's illegal, they know it's wrong and they do it. If you're so mentally weak that you have to take steroids, me five-rounds in the cage with you, I will destroy you. Cause you are mentally weak. So I'm all for it, if you want to take drugs go ahead and take drugs I don't really care but I'm going to whoop your butt because you are mentally weak and that's where you win fights in the mental stage. If you're weak enough to break down, I'm going to kill you."
-UFC Lightweight Champion Ben Henderson talks to fans in a Q&A prior to UFC 156 about fighters taking performance enhancers in MMA (transcribed by MMAMania.com).
Penick's Analysis: There are a few different responses fighters can take to the PED issue if they're clean. They can decry it and try to help advocate for increased testing in the sport, they can stay silent if they feel there's nothing they can do, or they can take Henderson's route and say, "it doesn't matter, I'll beat them anyway." Henderson's got the confidence in himself and his abilities that it doesn't matter what his opponents are doing out of the cage. Now, turning that around and saying he's going to "kill" them in the cage is quite extreme, but I think the sentiment is, if an opponent is weak enough that they're putting themselves at risk with PEDs, what he does to them in the cage will in turn hurt them worse than it might otherwise. Still extreme, but not necessarily inaccurate.
[Ben Henderson art by Grant Gould (c) MMATorch.com]
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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