Lincolnville’s Tim Boetsch realized his long-awaited main event dream at UFC Fight Night 68 Saturday night, but mixed martial arts legend Dan Henderson turned it into a nightmare.
Henderson, at 44 the oldest competitor in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, used his lethal right hand to set up a 28-second knockout of Boetsch in their middleweight clash at the Smoothie Event Center in New Orleans, Louisiana.
“Obviously, I can’t feel bad about that one,” Henderson said during his post-fight interview on Fox Sports 1, which broadcast the fight card live.
“It’s nice that when I say I’m not done and no one believes me that I actually come out and prove that I’m not quite done yet. It feels great.”
It was a night full of fireworks in the Crescent City, with 10 of the 12 fights on the New Orleans card ending in stoppages, seven in the first round.
But while many MMA followers expected the Boetsch-Henderson bout to end before its scheduled five-round, 25-minute main event distance, few expected such a quick ending.
The fighters briefly circled the cage before Boetsch moved forward and landed the first punch, an overhand right hand of his own.
Boetsch (18-9) soon moved forward again, but this time that aggressiveness was answered profoundly as Henderson countered with his trademark right hand — known as the “H-bomb” — to the jaw that sent the former four-time Maine high school wrestling state champion from Camden-Rockport High School in Rockport reeling.
“He throws his punches, his overhand right and his big left, and he rushes in,” Henderson said. “I was kind of expecting it and I wanted to throw it right down the pipe and I think that’s what hurt him originally, just a right hand right down the pipe.”
Henderson then leaped forward, landing a knee and a glancing right hand before a right uppercut sent Boetsch to the mat near the cage wall. Henderson then landed a brief succession of follow-up right hands before referee John McCarthy stepped in to stop the onslaught.
“I felt I got him hurt with that [first] right hand and he didn’t quite drop, then I caught him a little bit with the knee but I think it was the uppercut that got him. Then I think I hurt my hand at the end,” Henderson said. “I wasn’t going to let him off the hook. I knew I had him hurt and the fight was almost over, we just wanted to make sure it was done.”
For Henderson, a two-time U.S. Olympic Greco-Roman wrestler who made his professional MMA debut in 1997, the win improved his record to 31-13 and reversed a string of five losses in his previous six bouts to the likes of current UFC light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier, Rashad Evans, Vitor Belfort, Lyoto Machida and, most recently, sixth-ranked middleweight Gegard Mousasi.
“The last couple of years I felt like I had a lot of bad luck,” said Henderson, who trains out of Temecula, California. “It wasn’t necessarily my age, it was losing a couple of close fights and then the last fight I felt like the referee jumped in a little bit.
“It feels good to be in this position right now and to finish the fight the way I did.”
Henderson, who fought most of his UFC career as a light heavyweight, entered the Boetsch fight having fought 11 past and present UFC champions during his career while Boetsch was seeking perhaps his most significant victory despite earlier wins over such ranked contenders as Yushin Okami, Hector Lombard, C.B. Dollaway and Brad Tavares.
The 34-year-old Boetsch, a resident of Sunbury, Pennsylvania, was fighting for the third time since moving his training camp back to his native state with former UFC contender Marcus Davis’ Team Irish MMA Fitness Academy in Brewer.
Boetsch entered Saturday night’s bout ranked 13th among UFC 185-pound fighters, and while he had split his previous two bouts he was awarded a $50,000 post-fight bonus after each of those efforts — as performer of the night in a second-round stoppage of Tavares at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor last August, and for fight of the night in a second-round loss to Thales Leites at UFC 183 on Jan. 31 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
