Dan Henderson recently reflected on his grappling match with longtime rival Jon Jones, a bout that finally came to fruition at Chael Sonnen’s Submission Underground 2 event back in 2016. Though originally set to clash in the UFC years prior, their match was derailed. But in Portland’s Roseland Theater, they finally locked up — and Jones walked away with a submission win that left even the legendary Henderson surprised.
“You were supposed to compete with Jon Jones at one time and you guys didn’t compete, but you ended up grappling,”
Mike Perry remarked during a recent episode of the Overdogs Podcast.
What began as a long-standing UFC feud culminated in a grappling-only match, where Jones submitted Henderson via arm triangle choke at 6:39 of the main event. Henderson admitted he hadn’t taken the match as seriously as he should have.
“I should have maybe gotten a little bit of shape for that one, but I just thought it was going to be a fun thing to do,”
he explained.
That “fun thing” turned into a humbling lesson. After some crowd-pleasing antics — including Jones flopping to his back and daring Henderson to enter his guard — Jones turned it up with a slick takedown at the four-minute mark. From there, he transitioned to mount and locked in the finishing sequence.
“He got me with a nice arm-triangle, snuck it in there on me, the dirty bastard,”
Henderson joked after the match. But beneath the banter, he was clearly impressed.
“I never ever get submitted in that arm triangle that he got me in at training and I never get caught in that. Normally I don’t have any problem defending that,”
he said on the podcast, still processing how Jones pulled it off.
Henderson credited Jones’ rare combination of leverage, reach, and strength:
“I think he started working into that and I started doing what I would normally do, but his arms were so godd–n long that he just had it locked in before an elbow deep. I normally don’t have any problem defending that.”
For a man who’s faced the likes of Fedor Emelianenko, Michael Bisping, and Wanderlei Silva, Henderson’s praise for Jones carries serious weight.
“Most long guys like that don’t have the leverage and power that Jon has. He’s probably the best tall wrestler we ever saw,”
he remarked.
After the match, Jones also paid his respects to the veteran:
“Dan is so strong. I did not expect him to be that strong,”
Jones said.
Their once-heated rivalry ended with mutual respect — and a finish that showcased just how dangerous Jones can be, even in pure grappling.
Both men, it’s worth noting, have been linked to PED use at different points in their careers, making the physical edge that Jones demonstrated all the more controversial to some observers.
