Pettis Dethrones Henderson in Final WEC Event
Glendale, Ariz. – UFC, are you ready for “Showtime?” Because he’s coming soon. On a night wrapped in historical overtones, Anthony “Showtime” Pettis dethroned WEC lightweight champ Benson Henderson at Jobing.com Arena to earn a UFC title shot. Both fighters waged a back-&-forth battle that was worthy of Fight of the Night & may have been decided in the final 80 seconds of the fifth round. With the fight apparently up for grabs, Pettis went airborne, acrobatically bounced off the cage fence & executed a beautiful high kick that landed flush on the hometown champ’s jaw & dropped him to the canvas. It was an electrifying & unprecedented move that no one in press row had ever seen, like something out of a “The Matrix” movie. It sent the live crowd at the arena into mass hysteria. Henderson gamely weathered the crucial assault & got back to his feet, but that sequence may have anchored his defeat by unanimous decision. The riveting match was fittingly the last bout ever for the decade-old WEC, which is set to merge with its sister organization, the UFC. That means Pettis, a Milwaukee native who starred in an MTV episode of “World of Jenks,” is slated to fight the winner of the Jan. 1 bout between UFC lightweight champ Frankie Edgar & unbeaten challenger Gray Maynard. An emotional Pettis, whose father was murdered during an armed robbery in 2003, credited his coach Duke Roufus for the one-of-a-kind kick that made a lot of people’s jaw drop. “We practice that all the time,” Pettis said, “& I’ve got 10 more kicks like that coming when I get to the UFC.” Roufus called the kick an “Ong Bak” kick, noting it is an old Muay Thai technique. Pettis dropped Henderson on another occasion with a stiff right hand, but barely survived a rear naked choke in the fourth round that was close to being dead on. Pettis was not the only man to make history Thursday night. Dominick Cruz did, too. Cruz’s handsome reward for a night’s work: Two world titles & a slice of history. The super-quick Californian used his ‘catch-me-if-you-can’ striking style to beat up No.1 challenger Scott Jorgensen for five rounds to become the UFC’s first-ever bantamweight champ.
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Pettis Dethrones Henderson in Final WEC Event
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