While the final decision will ultimately be up to Benson Henderson himself, Bellator MMA President Scott Coker made it clear that he has no problem with :”Smooth” Henderson remaining a 170-pound fighter under the Bellator umbrella if that’s what he chooses to do after his crushing defeat in his promotional debut this past Friday evening.
Henderson was beaten down in a one-sided fight against Bellator 170-pound champion Andrei Koreshkov this past Friday night at the Bellator 153 event at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut, a show that aired live on Spike TV.
After the event, Coker took part in a media scrum and discussed his thoughts on the Henderson-Koreshkov fight, as well as what’s next for the former UFC Lightweight Champion.
Regarding the fight itself, Coker said it was clear that Henderson was on the wrong side of a one-sided fight.
“It was a tough fight man. Benson took a lot of shots. Even from the very beginning he looked like he was a foot shorter than Koreshkov. Koreshkov is no joke, man. He’s got a lot of power, and everything is hard. He hits hard with every shot. You saw the fight, it was clearly one-sided. So we’ll see what Benson wants to do next.”
As far as the decision to fight a 170-pound champion in his debut, despite the fact that he spent the majority of his career at 155-pounds, the same weight class he won a world title at in the UFC, Coker claimed it was Henderson’s choice.
“That was really his choice. He wanted to fight at 170, so we said fine. But he wanted to fight Koreshkov. Now I think he’s going to get together with his coach and see what’s probably best for his next step. Can he fight guys at 170? Yeah, but Koreshkov’s just a big man. He’s super-strong and he hits hard. I’m not sure what Benson could have done differently. He took a lot of shots and he didn’t have an answer for any of the offensive weapons that Koreshkov had.”
While Coker made it clear that Benson can remain at 170 pounds if he would like to, he did share his belief that he would probably have better success if he were to fight at 155 pounds again.
“A fight’s a fight, anything can happen. You could see his punches were short all-night long. And that reach that Koreshkov has, I don’t think he had an answer for that. I think Benson really had a lot of his better fights at 155, but that’s really is choice.”
H/T to MMAFighting.com for transcribing the above Scott Coker quotes.
