Johny HendricksA few months after announcing his retirement from mixed martial arts competition, former MMA and amateur wrestling champ Johny Hendricks will fight Brennan Ward in a professional bare-knuckle boxing match this November.
The former UFC titleholder and Oklahoma State wrestling champ will ditch the four-ounce gloves of MMA to take on Ward -- a former Bellator MMA fighter -- in the headline event at the first-ever World Bare Knuckle Fighting Federation event Friday, Nov. 9 at the Casper Events Center in Casper, Wyo.
The WBKFF's "Rise of the Titans" will also feature UFC veterans Chris Leben vs. Phil Baroni, as well as football linebacker Shawne Merriman vs. Mike Bourke. All matches will be available on pay-per-view and on FITE TV.
Back in June, Hendricks had announced he was retiring from MMA to become a wrestling coach at a private high school in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Hendricks, who launched his pro MMA career in Sept. 2007, won the UFC welterweight title in March 2014... only to lose it to Robbie Lawler in November of that year. Hendricks had compiled an 18-8 record.
Prior to launching his MMA career 11 years ago, Hendricks, 34, was a three-time Oklahoma high school wrestling champ who then made his name known beyond the Sooner State as an Oklahoma State mat star, winning two NCAA Division I championships and two Big 12 conference crowns.
Brennan Ward had a similar wrestling-to-MMA career trajectory. The 30-year-old had wrestled in high school, then at Colby Community College in Kansas, and at Johnson & Wales University, where he was an NCAA Division III championships finalist at 184 pounds in 2010. He then entered MMA, where he was 14-6. Ward announced his retirement in August of 2017.
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