Joe Hendry was ready for Robert Whittaker.
In 2018, Joe Hendry called out reigning UFC Middleweight Champion Robert Whittaker. Whittaker and Hendry were both set to compete in the 2018 Commonwealth Games in freestyle wrestling.
"Not in the UFC. Hell no. I was calling him out for amateur wrestling," Hendry told Fightful's Sean Ross Sapp when asked about a potential showdown with Whittaker in the UFC. He qualified for the Commonwealth Games the same year I did. "I ended up facing Australia in the first round. If Robert Whittaker hadn’t pulled out, I would have faced the active UFC champion. I already made my mind up about what I was going to do because he’s just better than me. He’s going to run through me. So what I was going to do is literally give him the Goldberg spear to the single leg, shoot wildly for this takedown, and do something mad right off the bat, and do something crazy. That was my strategy. In my head, I was like, ‘there is no shame in getting beat by the UFC champion.’"
Whittaker was forced to withdraw from the Games less than three weeks from the event in order not to risk being stripped of his UFC Middleweight Champion as the company was worried about a potential injury.
Hendry ended up losing to Australia's Nicolaas Verreynne in the round of 16 in the 2018 Commonwealth game.
Elsewhere during the interview, Hendry expressed his desire to compete in Bloodsport. You can find his full comments by clicking here.
You can watch the full interview with Hendry in the video above.
