Dan Henderson was taken off this weekend’s UFC On FOX 19 co-main event after his opponent Lyoto Machida failed a pre-fight drug test, but the UFC have quickly found a new opponent for him on a different event.
Henderson will now fight Hector Lombard at UFC 199 in Los Angeles on June 4th instead.
Now 45, ‘Hendo’ has admitted that there’s a possibility his next fight could be his last, though it sounds as if a lot will depend on the outcome.
The veteran star has lost three of his last four fights, including a first round KO defeat against Vitor belfort last time out, though his bout prior to that had been a 28 second KO win over Tim Boetsch.
Looking through a wider lens, Henderson has only won three of his nine fights since returning to the UFC from Strikeforce in 2011, so it does feel as if another defeat could be enough to bring his long career to a close.
In Lombard he’s facing a fighter who’ll be making his return to the middleweight division after a stint at welterweight that started promisingly with two wins in a row, but then led to a victory over Josh Burkman being overturned to a ‘no contest’ ruling due to testing positive for steroids, and then a tough TKO loss to Neil Magny upon his return over a year later.
Lombard pointed to his hard weight cut to get down to the welterweight limit as the reason he wasn’t able to maintain his strong start against Magny, and so he now hopes to rejuvenate both his body and his career with a return to 185lbs.
Henderson Vs Lombard will join a UFC 199 card that already had a twelve fight line-up, headlined by a middleweight title fight rematch between Luke Rockhold and Chris Weidman, with a bantamweight title fight old rivals Dominick Cruz and Urijah Faber featuring in the co-main event spot.
