Benson Henderson is back in a main event, and back in a familiar spot: the 42-year-old former MMA champion is scheduled to fight Patrick Habirora in the Pfl Brussels headliner on Saturday. Henderson retired from MMA in 2023, but he never really left the gym.
He said he was training again the week after retirement and kept working ever since, even while shifting into boxing bouts in Misfits, appearances in Karate Combat and a freestyle wrestling match in RAF. Henderson said the call for this comeback started with a text from Mike Kogan, who had been reacting to online criticism and then offered him the matchup with Habirora two days later. “My man Mike Kogan, the head matchmaker for Bellator now the head matchmaker for PFL, great guy, I love him, he’s always done me right,” Henderson said.
That offer found a fighter who never completely embraced the word retired. Henderson said, “Since the day I retired, I was back in the gym the next week, on the mats training again,” and added, “I never stopped. I never stopped training.” He also coaches at The MMA Lab in Arizona, where he said the culture is built around relentless work: “Our whole thing at The MMA Lab is being the hardest working gym in the world.”
There is more behind the timing than just competition. Henderson said part of stepping away in 2023 was to let his wife focus on her own fighting career, but injuries and time off slowed her progress. That makes this return less like a one-off stunt than a resumption of a life he never truly paused. For Henderson, fight weeks and Monday practices have always been linked, and he said of the gym routine, “We’re always right back. We fight on Saturdays and back in the gym on Monday working to get better, win or lose, it doesn’t matter.”
The unresolved piece is what comes after Brussels. Henderson said he is taking a wait-and-see approach about fighting again once Saturday is over. For now, the comeback is real, the opponent is set, and the man who walked away in 2023 is once again standing in the middle of the conversation about where he fits in the sport.
