Vitor Belfort and Dan Henderson can’t seem to find a good way to leave the party.
They were among the earliest to arrive, and somehow they’re both still here, still dancing, despite the fact most other guys their age hit the bricks hours ago. Now, everybody else keeps looking at them out of the corners of their eyes, wondering how long they can keep this up.
When Belfort and Henderson meet on Saturday at UFC Fight Night 77, the two former champions will bring a combined 83 years of life experience and 79 fights to the cage.
You want a good barometer for how long they’ve been doing this?
Both are previous UFC tournament champions.
These two guys have also both been fairly immovable on the subject of retirement. Belfort, who is 38, shot down rumors he might hang it up earlier this year, after his first-round technical knockout loss to middleweight champion Chris Weidman. Henderson, told Fox Sports' Damon Martin in June that he intends to fight out the remainder of his contract before making any decisions about his future.
"I'll be here at least another year," Henderson said via Martin, perhaps not anticipating he would make a trio of Octagon appearances during 2015 alone.
But now comes this fight, which—if you tip your ear just right to the speaker—sounds like a pretty perfect song to have as a last dance.
Both guys have a special opportunity here. This bout will be the culmination of a trilogy between the two, and it figures to wrap a nice little bow on the UFC’s testosterone-replacement-therapy era. It might be Hendo’s last decent shot to go out on a win and maybe represents the final chance for Belfort to make a halfway-graceful exit from the sport he helped build, too.
Nobody’s trying to tell these guys what to do, but on the offhand chance they are considering calling it a career? Well, you’re not going to find a much softer landing spot than this.
On the other hand, once this fight is over, it might be hard for matchmakers to even know what to do with them if they insist on soldiering on.
Henderson, who turned 45 (45!) in August, rolls in just 2-5 in his last seven fights. He’s coming off a first-round knockout over Tim Boetsch five months ago, but his only other win during that stretch was a come-from-behind KO of the also fading Mauricio “Shogun” Rua in March 2014.
He’s lost to nearly all the high-level competition he’s faced dating back to the beginning of 2012, and it’s starting to seem like the glorious TKO of Fedor Emelianenko he used to cap his career in Strikeforce was an awfully long time ago.
Come to think of it, it was a long time ago. It was July 2011.
When Henderson spoke with Martin, he said he had three fights remaining on his current UFC deal. He’s fought twice since then, so unless he signed an extension somewhere along the way without telling us, he already knows he’s going to have a decision to make after this fight.
Meanwhile, things have only gotten dicier for Belfort in recent years. At this point, the noose of truth about his TRT use and the multiple drug tests he has failed is starting to look awfully tight around his shriveling neckline.
He enters this bout 5-2 over roughly the same stretch where Hendo struggled so mightily. His most recent appearance, however, was that loss to Weidman, where Belfort looked a far cry from the muscled-up monster who won three straight fights by head-kick knockout (including one over Henderson) during 2013.
His recent career includes an 18-month stretch of inactivity after TRT was abruptly banned from competition in February 2014. Then there was the embarrassing Deadspin report in September that said UFC executives allowed Belfort to compete for the light heavyweight title at UFC 152 despite knowing he had elevated levels of testosterone just three weeks before the event.
That latest failed test joins Belfort’s positive steroid exam in Nevada from 2006 (after a fight with Henderson, no less) and the surprise test he flunked for elevated testosterone in February 2014. All told they paint a fairly disquieting picture of his career over the last decade or so.
Last month he reportedly pulled out of a scheduled appearance on the MMA Hour when host Ariel Helwani refused to agree not to ask about Belfort’s recent testing woes. Soon after, he appeared on AXS TV’s Inside MMA and rejected the notion he ever tried to keep information about his drug use out of the public eye.
"I never hide anything from anybody," Belfort said, via MMA Fighting’s Guilherme Cruz. "You know the media. I’ve always received them in my house, I receive them very open, I talk about it and I never try to handle anything."
Despite his near constant denials—and recent presidential endorsements—it’s getting harder and harder to justify Belfort as a relevant force in 2015 and beyond. He’s lost two title fights in two different weight classes during the last few years and both eventually became steeped in controversy.
The Henderson fight should grant him a brief reprieve—since both were known TRT users, there’s some karmic justice in the matchup—but it’s tough to see a real workable path for him after this.
These two are pretty much perfect for each other: Two elder statesmen who split their previous two meetings—Henderson won in 2006, Belfort in 2013—and now need each other to ease into their golden years.
So far they’ve both given the impression they will do this fighting thing as long as they possibly can. Neither has ever seemed concerned with having an exit strategy. But if either—or both—wants an elegant transition to instant Hall of Fame status, it’s right here, right now.
If ever there was a time to ease the party bus onto the next freeway off ramp, it’ll be after this fight.
Chad Dundas covers MMA for Bleacher Report. His novel Champion of the World is available for preorder on Amazon.
