Benson Henderson was in an absolute war against Donald Cerrone in what has surely been one of the best fights this year. The WEC's new interim Lightweight Champion talked about his fight and what it means to be a champion:

"I think you have to have those fights where you're just dominant and you show the world that you're that much better than your opponent, but you have to have those fights where the fans, the crowd knows that you were pushed to your limit, and you went out there and you showed your heart and soul – you gave it everything you had... To be a great champ, to be known as one of the greatest fighters, you have to have both of those."

He talked about defending all those submission attempts and the very close decision -- looks like both Cerrone and Henderson agree with the three judges:

"I was pretty confident that I won rounds one, two and three. He definitely won the fourth round; he beat the crap out of me. But I definitely thought I won wounds one, two and three. The fourth and fifth round I thought he won."

Thankfully, I had a lot of guillotine defense practice for my last fight. I'm pretty comfortable there. I wasn't really too worried... It was pretty tight. But I wasn't too concerned... I just stayed calm, nice and relaxed. I managed to do the proper defense ad work my way out of there... The kimura at the end of the fight, I really didn't know what people were talking about until I watched it. Then when I watched it on TV, I was like, 'I guess that did look kind of bad.' But I'm pretty flexible in my shoulders and elbows and stuff"

He also talked about his next opponent, the WEC Lightweight Champion Jamie Varner:

"I think [Varner] is a really good wrestler. I think collegiate-wise, my wrestling is a little better than his wrestling. He's a good boxer. He's a better boxer. We have to worry about his boxing as opposed to being worried about Donald Cerrone's kickboxing. As far as submissions, not that we don't have to be worried about any submissions, but we're not too concerned about submission as we were with Donald Cerrone. We knew that Donald had a nasty triangle-armbar, armbar-triangle setup."

HT: mmajunkie