Dan Henderson

STOCKHOLM – Dan Henderson said he has no concerns about brain trauma following a 70-second TKO loss to Gegard Mousasi at UFC on FOX 14, which took place Saturday at Stockholm’s Tele2 Arena.

Henderson, 44, suffered a record 15th knockdown in UFC/WEC/PRIDE/Strikeforce competition against Mousasi in UFC on FOX 14’s co-headliner. After the fight, he showed no signs retirement is on his mind.

“Tonight I felt fine the whole time,” Henderson told 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.”

The defeat to Mousasi (36-5-2 MMA, 3-2 UFC) marked Henderson’s (30-13 MMA, 7-7 UFC) fourth loss in his past five bouts. He’s been stopped inside the distance in three of those contests, two due to strikes.

Prior to his knockout loss to Vitor Belfort in November 2013, Henderson had never been finished by strikes. That trend has taken a sudden turn of late, though. The former PRIDE and Strikeforce champion is clearly unable to absorb the same amount of damage as previous moments in his career.

The loss to Mousasi was somewhat controversial, as some believed referee Leon Roberts stopped the fight early. Henderson also suffered a cut on the eyelid early in the fight, an injury unlike anything that’s previously occurred in one of his bouts.

Henderson shrugged off the notion that he’s taken too much damage in his 43-fight career. However, he said he’s unsure how long the eye injury will force him to the sidelines.

“I have no idea (if I’ll fight again),” Henderson said. “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.”

The bout with Mousasi marked Henderson’s first UFC middleweight bout since his unforgettable knockout of Michael Bisping at UFC 100 in July 2009. While the drop in weight didn’t produce the result he wanted, Henderson said if he does fight again, it would almost certainly be at 185 pounds.

“I’ll probably stay, it doesn’t matter,” Henderson said. “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.”

For more on UFC on FOX 14, check out the UFC Events section of the site.