Henry Sejudo is a mixed martial arts fighter and holder of the UFC Flyweight Championship. Interestingly, he became famous as an athlete even before moving to MMA. Sehudo has been successfully engaged in freestyle wrestling for a long time and even managed to get an Olympic gold medal in this sport in 2008.
Early years and achievements in freestyle wrestling
Henry Sejudo appeared in Los Angeles in February 1987 in a poor Mexican family. He was the youngest of six children, and he practically did not remember his father, as he was serving time in prison. Together with his mother and brothers, at an early age, he moved a lot from city to city. The Sejudo family eventually settled in Phoenix, Arizona.
Henry became interested in wrestling under the influence of his older brother Angel, who at some point was even the state champion among school students. Soon, two talented boys were noticed and they were able to continue their sports education at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.
In 2005, he competed at the World Junior Freestyle Wrestling Championships and finished fifth. And in 2006, he managed to become the winner of the Pan American Championship (that is, the championship of the countries of South and North America) and the US national championship. In 2007, he won bronze in the World Cup and confirmed the title of Pan American Champion and Champion of the States.
At the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China, Henry Sehudo fought in the 55kg (featherweight) category. He managed to win in all five of his meetings (in particular, in the final he was stronger than the Japanese Tomihiro Matsunagi) and won Olympic gold. And this, of course, made him famous - he became a media person and took part in several popular American television shows (for example, he was a guest on the Oprah Winfrey show).
But he was not destined to get to the Olympics for the second time. In 2012, he unsuccessfully performed at the national qualifying competitions and decided to leave freestyle wrestling.
Henry Sejudo's career in MMA from 2013 to 2016
On January 30, 2013, Sejudo tweeted that he was moving into mixed martial arts. He had his debut fight as an MMA fighter on March 2, 2013 at the World Fighting Federation tournament in Arizona. Here Henry Sejudo competed in the 135-pound division against Michael Poe. The fight ended pretty quickly - already in the first round, Sehudo defeated Pou by TKO.
Over the next year, Sejudo played 5 more MMA fights and won all of them. As a result, the largest MMA organization of the UFC drew attention to him and in July 2014 he signed a contract with her. In fact, Henry Sejudo became the third Olympic champion in this organization (after Kevin Jackson and Mark Schultz).
Sejudo's debut fight was expected to take place on August 30, 2014 at UFC 177, with Scott Jorgensson as his rival. But at the last moment, this fight was canceled due to health problems of one of the participants.
As a result, Sehudo made his debut in December 2014 at UFC on Fox 13. Here he had to fight against Dustin Kimura. It was a bantamweight fight. And here Sehudo showed himself to be a really good fighter - the judges at the end of the fight unanimously recognized him as the winner.
Then from the lightest weight Henry Sehudo moved to the lightest, where he also confidently defeated one opponent after another. And on April 23, 2016, he received the right to compete for the champion title in this weight as a challenger. But this time Sehudo was not up to par - Johnson in the first round hit him with a series of knees to the body, and as a result, the fight was stopped. That is, Johnson won by TKO.
Also in 2016, Henry participated in the reality show "The Ultimate Fighter 24" and suffered his first defeat here as an MMA fighter. He lost by split decision to American Joseph Benavidez. In many ways, this outcome was facilitated by the fact that in the first round, Henry was fined one point for strikes to the groin.
The last two fights
One of the most important fights in Sejudo's biography was the fight that took place on August 4, 2018 at UFC 227. It was a fight against Demetrius Johnson and, like in 2016, Sehudo was in challenger status here. The fight lasted all five rounds, after which the decision on who won was taken by the judges. And this decision was not unanimous. One judge preferred Johnson and the other two preferred Sejudo. This, of course, was enough for Henry to become the owner of the championship belt.
In 2019, Sejudo also had one fight. On January 20, he entered the octagon against TJ Dillashaw. This confrontation was the main event of UFC Fight Night 143, and it received special attention from the audience. But it lasted only 32 seconds …
Dillashaw was considered the favorite in this battle (the bookmaker's quotes also spoke about this), but from the very beginning everything did not go according to his script. Sejudo's work in this duel was truly masterful. First, he jerked his opponent off his feet and began to finish him off from a top position. Dillashaw tried to get up, but got a left side to his chin, which put him back on the floor. Dillashaw started to get up again and immediately missed another hard blow to the jaw. Dillashaw clearly had no control over the situation, so the referee stopped the fight. So Sejudo won his 14th victory in MMA (this is an excellent statistic, especially considering that there were only two defeats so far) and defended the championship title.
As for the next fight, according to the existing information, it will take place on June 9 in Chicago at UFC 238. Marlon Moraes will be the rival of Henry Sejudo.
