#alltimegoat

[beerselfie]

#Repost @hopsnobbery ・・・ Now, I don't know much about sportsball, and I don't have a goat.... but this cat showed up and he seems like a pretty big deal to me 🤷🏻‍♀️ ⠀ ⠀ We both agreed that @noblealeworks knocked it out of the park with this one! Coming in at 9% this homerun of a beer is super hop forward with tons of papaya and mango and some damn good boozy heat to it that seems to linger just a bit! ⠀ ⠀ #yaysportsball #alltimeGOAT #noblealeworks⠀ ⠀

[beerselfie]

#Repost @craftybeermaven ・・・ Pre-date night beer was this incredible juice bomb by @noblealeworks #AllTimeGOAT - damn this was good. Off to dinner with @peternuts255 who also gave the beer two 👍🏼👍🏼. Picture in front of my truck #Brienne because @gameofthrones is back 😉 #datenight

[puntsandbunts]

Don’t you dare disparage Dan Henderson!

Henderson went from a Hall of Very Good fighter to one discussed among the all-time greats after he started TRT.

— Mike Fagan (@ItsMikeFagan)

June 7, 2015

I don’t get much in the way of hate responses lately, but the above tweet did it. The responses ran the gamut: douche, asshole, clueless, troll, “this is why I stopped following,” etc. I live for this.

Anyway, I felt like I should explain myself.

My tweet wasn’t written with a ton of finesse. I was tired and edged a little too into hyperbole to make a point. As @GrabakaHitman pointed out to me, Henderson was likely a Hall of Famer prior to his TRT use (which began leading up to Pride 33). I’m not sure he’s a slam dunk like some of his contemporaries, but the argument for him is convincing.

But I don’t think that takes away from the point I was trying to make. Henderson’s TRT use coincided with a major shift in his results and elongated his fight career. Both of these things helped transcend Henderson from probable Hall of Famer to a guy that people are putting into Greatest of All Time talk:

Top 5 all time. Maybe Top 3. https://t.co/0WICnbCKYJ

— Josh Gross (@yay_yee)

June 7, 2015

Now, I don’t care about PEDs/TRT/doping. Dan Henderson seems like a great example of a guy who used responsibly and benefited greatly from it. Henderson probably made good money in Pride, and TRT extended his career another eight years (and more?) during the American boom.

So, I’m not trying to disparage Dan Henderson when I point these things out, but rather the hypocrisy of people like Gross. That is, people who railed against TRT exemptions, who celebrated the UFC’s new drug policy, who questioned Anderson Silva’s legacy because of his failed test, but have no problem forgiving and/or ignoring Henderson's use for whatever reason.

And how did Henderson’s TRT use effect his career? Let’s take a look:

PRE-TRT (through Pride 32) 26 fights | 3 KO | 3 TKO | 23.1% (T)KO rate KO: Gono, Chonan, Renzo TKO: Bustamante, Oyama, Shoji

ON TRT (Pride 33 through Shogun 2) 15 fights | 3 KO | 3 TKO | 40.0% (T)KO rate KO: Wanderlei, Bisping, Babalu TKO: Fedor, Feijao, Shogun

FIGHTMETRIC STATS

PRE-TRT (through Pride 32) 21 fights | 7 knockdowns | ~0.45 knockdowns/15 minutes

ON TRT (Pride 33 through Shogun 2) 15 fights | 9 knockdowns | ~0.69 knockdowns/15 minutes

We can’t say - with certainty - that TRT was the sole cause for Henderson’s late-career transformation, but the implication is strong. Both his (T)KO and knockdown rates jumped while on TRT despite fighting better competition. This occurred between the ages of 36 and 43. 

I had someone argue with me that knocking out Tim Boetsch was somehow proof that TRT didn’t help Henderson all that much. That’s a real strong reach, but: 1) Tim Boetsch is not Fedor, Wanderlei, Bisping, etc. 2) If TRT didn’t help Henderson’s career/he didn’t really need it, that makes his use even more suspect. 

Is Dan Henderson one of the all-time greats? Yes. Was he one of the all-time greats before 2007? Yes. Is he one of the top 3-5 of all time? Not unless we erase GSP, Anderson Silva, Jon Jones, Jose Aldo, and Fedor Emelianenko from the history books. Is he one of the top 10 of all time? FightMatrix suggests he is, and I think that’s a fair argument. Would he be had he not used TRT? I have a hard time believing so.