UFC Fight Night 77 Preview: MMA legends Belfort, Henderson face each in rubber match
On Saturday, November 7th, two UFC veterans will be facing each other for the third time to settle the score.
Former UFC heavyweight champion Vitor Belfort will be facing former PRIDE FC middleweight champion Dan Henderson, as both men headline UFC Fight Night 77. The event will be held at the Ginásio do Ibirapuera in São Paulo, Brazil.
Both "The Phenom" and "Hendo" have been around the mixed martial arts circuit since the mid 1990's. Belfort found early success at UFC 12 in Dothan, Alabama, in 1997, where he won the said event's heavyweight tournament title. Then 19 years old, Belfort became the youngest fighter to ever score a victory in the UFC.
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Along the way he has also managed to win the UFC light heavyweight title, facing fellow veterans such as Randy "The Natural" Couture and "The Axe Murderer", Wanderlei Silva.
Throughout his success, however, Belfort did encounter some setbacks. Around the early 2010s, the Brazilian fighter mainly had problems with fight drug tests, as he would often come out with elevated testosterone levels.
In a recent report by MMA Fighting, Belfort addressed an apparent issue where he failed his UFC 152 pre-fight drug test in 2012. He faced former light heavyweight champion Jon Jones in the said event.
"I was under a medical treatment and my doctors dealt with it together with the UFC. The truth is I always shared my exams with the UFC, so there was no problem. I fought under the commission's approval, with UFC's approval. There was nothing under the table."
Henderson, in many ways, took the similar path that Belfort did. He also fought his first few fights in the UFC, winning the middleweight tournament title at UFC 17 in 1998. "Hendo", however, found more success at PRIDE FC in Japan, where he dominated the company's middleweight division for seven years.
Henderson also encountered some bumps on the road with the sudden ban of Testosterone Replacement Therapy (TRT) use, but was not as controversial as Belfort's case. Which is why coming into the fight, he had some words to say about his opponent's situation, noting that Belfort was taking "more than just TRT."
"He was abusing something," Henderson said in another MMA Fighting report. "Obviously, we won't know for sure unless somebody comes out and says they know, but I have no idea. I can only speculate."
The event will be co-headlined by a light heavyweight bout between former title challenger Glover Teixeira and number ten ranked 205-pounder Patrick Cummins.
