Since he has retired, Benson Henderson doesn’t have to hide the truth anymore – he did fight with a toothpick in his mouth on multiple occasions.
Henderson recently said that he had a bad habit of keeping toothpicks in his mouth during fights. He would usually find them at restaurants while out for breakfast, lunch or dinner, and then mistakenly keep them in his mouth during practice and fight sessions.
BJ Henderson used to keep toothpicks in his mouth during his UFC fights, which left many people confused and amazed. Everyone from fans to other fighters were interested in why a professional athlete would compete with something like a toothpick hidden in their mouth at the same time!
Somehow, Henderson managed to do it.
However, only once in his life – before he started fighting professionally – did Henderson’s bad toothpick habit almost put him into the hospital.
I had just graduated college and decided to go home as a surprise for my mom. I was holding a toothpick in my mouth when she came down the stairs and saw me. I felt embarrassed because I knew it wasn’t very smart of me to do that, but before I even had time to explain, I had already swallowed the toothpick!
I was coming down the stairs. Suddenly I shouted “Boo!” and scared my mom, who is a small woman with a height of 4 feet 9 inches. She was so shocked that it was actually funny! To top it off, she also saw me swallow my toothpick which made her even more scared. As I was choking on the toothpick, I started laughing uncontrollably! Finally, I somehow managed to swallow it.
“I wasn’t sure I was OK,” Henderson said. “So, I looked in the mirror and checked my mouth out. Then, my mom yelled at me for having a toothpick in my mouth! Thankfully, this was the only time something bad happened.”
Henderson is a father of four kids, and he was afraid that his children might try to copy him by using toothpicks which could lead to Dangerous outcomes, so he decided to quit this habit for good.
To his surprise, giving up toothpicks wasn’t as hard as he had thought it would be. He said with a laugh that all it took was chewing more gum than usual, instead of the toothpick. So in the end, he ended up chewing too much gum but it wasn’t very hard for him.
