Why having Anthony Pettis as UFC lightweight champion 'doesn't suck'

Hands up if you picked Anthony Pettis to win the UFC lightweight title via first-round submission at UFC 164.

And please, if you wouldn’t mind, go ahead and keep those hands up. It will give the rest of us a good chance to see who the liars are.

With Pettis, we’ve learned to expect flashy kicks, jumping knees, striking combos that look like something a bored “Tekken” character came up with – all of that. If he was going to have a chance against Benson Henderson in Saturday’s UFC 164 pay-per-view headliner, the conventional wisdom said he’d first have to figure out how to stay off his back. I doubt many of us ever seriously considered that he might actually win the fight there instead.

Henderson certainly never dreamt of it. If he had, the now-former champ might not have started the fight in instant takedown mode. The former champ spent the bulk of the first three minutes looking to pin Pettis against the fence, possibly just to keep him from jumping off of it.

When he finally did get the fight to the mat, he seemed to think that the only thing he needed to concern himself with was keeping Pettis down. He was so caught up in that endeavor that he didn’t even see the armbar until he was already in it. Not what you’d expect from a guy who made his entrance wearing a jiu-jitsu gi and a black belt.

You can almost forgive, or at least understand, Henderson’s slow reaction to the armbar. Who thought Pettis had that in his arsenal? Who believed he’d go for something like that in the first round of a five-round title fight, especially against a guy who would love nothing more than for a failed submission attempt to give him an opening to advance his position on top?

As with the “Showtime Kick,” maybe the armbar worked because it never occurred to Henderson to be worried about it. Not until it was too late.

SEE ALSO: UFC 164: Anthony Pettis vs. Benson Henderson full fight video highlights

And just like that, we’ve got ourselves a new UFC lightweight champ. As far as personalities and fighting styles go, this one seems about as different as he could be from the last one, both inside the cage and out. If you think that’s anything other than good news from the UFC’s perspective, you haven’t been paying attention.

Say you’re UFC President Dana White. Say you swapped Henderson (19-3 MMA, 7-1 UFC) for Pettis (17-2 MMA, 4-1 UFC). Say you went from a nice, well-rounded, soft-spoken, church-going, decision-prone, doer-of-all-things through Christ to a flashy finisher who makes it his first order of business to put on his gold chain to match his new gold belt, all before he calls out another champ for one of those mythical superfights the UFC is always so excited about.

You go from the guy with the awkward interviews and the scraggly beard to the guy who speaks in sound bites and looks like the “after” photo on a mail-order self-grooming kit. Not that you want to be rooting for one guy over another if you’re the UFC boss, but if that’s how the chips fall, hey, that’s not a bad exchange.

As White himself put it following the post-fight press conference: “Listen, if you get a guy, and he fights like Anthony Pettis and he looks like Anthony Pettis and he dresses like Anthony Pettis, that doesn’t suck.”

Pettis is a lot more in line with what fans expect of a UFC titleholder. Instead of trying to nullify the other guy’s offense, as Henderson often did as champ, Pettis fights as if he views opponents as little more than lifelike crash-test dummies. They exist solely so he can do something violently awesome to them. They are the flaming hoop for him to jump through. They provide just enough danger and risk to get the crowd oohing and ahhing, but are quickly forgotten and unceremoniously extinguished once the trick is complete.

That brings us back to Henderson, who was last seen on live TV with his injured arm tucked inside his T-shirt. Where does he go now that he’s 0-2 against the current champ, with his second attempt far less competitive than the first?

The UFC’s endless loop of ads for this event had Henderson repeating over and over again that this rematch was all about getting “that Pettis stain” off his soul. Then he got his big chance to do a little payback stain-removal and ended up making it much, much worse. It’s like trying to get a coffee splotch off your shirt and somehow dousing yourself with red wine in the process.

Maybe it’s a learning experience for the ex-champion. This could be the kind of fight that changes his whole approach. Maybe instead of trying to win rounds, he’ll look to finish fights. Instead of creeping forward by inches, advancing from one foxhole to the next, he might start storming beaches and knocking down castles.

Why not? It’s worked for Pettis. Then again, there aren’t a whole lot of people who can do what “Showtime” does. There might be even fewer who can stop it.

For complete coverage of UFC 164, stay tuned to the UFC Events section of the site.

(Pictured: Anthony Pettis)