It’s common knowledge that Dan Henderson featured on the original version of Mount Rushmore.
However, the MMA legend was deemed so American that the powers that be decided it was simply unfair on George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln to have their granite likenesses alongside that of the great Hendo. The fighter has too much red, white and blue pumping through his veins that they shipped stone Henderson to Easter Island and left the monument as a foursome.
That’s a fact… you won’t find it any history books though.
After nearly two decades of dedicated service to the art of fighting, Henderson hung up his 4 oz gloves for good following a lionhearted performance against Michael Bisping for the UFC middleweight title in UFC 204’s main event. A fortnight after his swansong fight, an image of his retirement party started doing the rounds on social media and, as you’ve probably already guessed, it’s everything you want it to be and more.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BL4vecPANrG/
There’s a lot going on in that photo, and each section is more American than the last. So let’s take our time and soak in this magnum opus of Americana in its entirety before we delve deeper and analyse the individual parts.
Uncle Sam wants you… to marvel at its Americanness.
BBQ
Not all cooking is American.
This concept can get confusing, particularly when you have some cultures in the Mediterranean who cook American foods, like pizza, in an outdoor setting (also American), but the difference is they use usually use a very un-American method like baking it in a stone oven. If you served a stone-baked pie to Lady Liberty she’d get you get you in a half-nelson so tight, you’d think North Dakota was South Dakota.
The only way to serve up grub in the land of the free is to take a big slab of meat (preferably from an animal who’ve killed and butchered yourself) and slap that baby on a massive outdoor grill. Hendo executed this technique perfectly.
Murica level – Hot dogs in the ball park with Oprah Winfrey.
Tools!
There is nothing in life that can’t be made more patriotic with the introduction of power tools. Whether they’re entirely necessary in the art of cuisine or not is irrelevant… they’re badass.
A good pair of gloves to keep the hands clean (for fighting, working, hunting, fixing trucks etc), a spare for back-up and a trash-can to throw away all that fur, gizzards, tendons and all that other crap that you can’t form into a patty and fit between two buns.
Murica level – Cranking up Hank Williams in the Trans Am on the way to the NASCAR track.
American apparel
You can ignore the dude on the far right wearing the AC⚡DC t-shirt. Although they are a rock n’ roll band, a genre invented in the home of the brave, they are actually from Australia, which is famously not in the United States.
However, the two shirtless gentlemen to his right and the dames in the left background donning jorts (that’s jean-shorts to the layperson) have got their attire 100% right. They’re the type of clothes you can wear saluting the flag.
As for Hendo… we’ll he’s taken things to a whole new level.
The H-Bomb’s ensemble was not thrown together by accident, he’s actually following a scientific formula to maximise his American levels.
The perfect patriotism theorem states that maximum patriotic levels are achieved by adding the sum of all the peak Chuck Norris… s.
More often than not when you you follow this formula the result will be none other than Dan Henderson. If you wind up with Kid Rock, you’ll know you’ve gone terribly wrong somewhere.
Murica level – Apple pie with the Tim McGraw on Superbowl weekend.
These colours don’t run
Old Glory, the Star Spangled Banner, the red, white and blue… it has a lot of names, but no American retirement party would be complete without it. We count at least two American flags at Hendo’s and another potential one underneath the Cowboy hat.
We’d like to think that bandana was white when he bought, but as soon as he tied it around his noggin it instantly transformed into the stars and stripes.
Overall Murica level – Throwing the pigskin with Abe Lincoln’s beard on the fourth of July… y’all.
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