Henderson unconcerned about brain trauma

Dan Henderson had never been stopped by strikes until November 9, 2013, when Vitor Belfort knocked him out in 77 seconds. The next fight he knocked Shogun out in the third. Then Daniel Cormier beat him badly, finishing it with a rear naked choke in the third. And Saturday night he lost to Gegard Mousasi via strikes in just 70 seconds. He also suffered a major cut to the eye.

The fight was Hendo’s first at middleweight since he landed the mother of all highlight reel knockouts, of Michael Bisping at UFC 100 on 11 July 2009. And it was his fifth loss in six fights. However, Henderson, 44, said he remains unconcerned about head trauma.

Tonight I felt fine the whole time, said Henderson to Mike Bohn for MMAjunkie at the post-fight press conference. I’m real careful in practice and train smart. I feel good. It was just an unfortunate thing tonight, but I feel completely fine and healthy.

I have no idea (if I’ll fight again). I’ve got to see the specialist in the morning as far as stitching it up. It probably looks worse than it is. The eyelid was sliced open, and it needs to be stitched up by an eye specialist. I’ve never had that kind of injury before. I rarely get caught in a fight, and I can imagine it will heal like any other stitches.

My eyelid was sliced open. I knew that something was wrong when I couldn’t see out of it. It didn’t feel like a hard punch, but I couldn’t see and it was real blurry out of one eye and then Gegard started pointing at it. I just felt like if they looked at it it would have been stopped. So I tried to pressure him and he clipped me a little bit then you guys saw what happened. I feel like I didn’t really get in there to fight and get an opportunity. It’s just unfortunate the way it happened and it just sucks.

I’ll probably stay (at 185), it doesn’t matter. My body felt great and I felt fine. The weight cut was fairly easy. Naturally I weigh fairly light anyway. I was kind of tired of pushing around these big guys.