Something about the tone of Dan Henderson’s voice made it sound almost like a plea for help.

Standing in the cage after his second-round knockout victory over Hector Lombard at UFC 199, he sounded almost like a man who wanted this to be the end, but didn’t quite trust himself to make it so. He talked about examining his options, now that his current UFC contract is finished. He talked about being glad his kids could be here to see this one. He talked about the uncertain options that lay ahead.

He talked himself right up to the cliff, but he couldn’t quite talk himself over it.

Can you blame him? Just a couple months shy of his 46th birthday, Henderson pocketed the highest disclosed payout at UFC 199, earning a cool $800,000 on top of his $50,000 “Performance of the Night” bonus. For years, people have been telling him he’s finished in this sport, or at least asking him when he’ll be finished, and doing so in a fashion that suggests they think it ought to be soon.

Still, there he is, knocking out a top middleweight like Lombard, adding another elbow-tastic highlight to his already extensive reel, and walking away with what, for MMA fighters, is a legitimately colossal payday. And we want to know, what, when he’s going to turn his back on that ATM that keeps spitting money at him?

Henderson finds himself in a rare situation among aging MMA fighters. He’s floated the idea that he might be willing to take what former UFC welterweight champion Matt Hughes once referred to, while rubbing his hands like a cartoon cat preparing to eat a canary, as “one of those Chuck Liddell jobs.”

As in, if the UFC wants to give him a do-nothing executive gig where he collects paychecks in exchange for never again subjecting us to one of his fights, sure, he’ll seriously consider that.

But when Liddell got that job he’d lost three straight fights via knockout. Hughes had lost two in a row when he landed a similar position. Henderson has gone through his rough spots, but he’s always rebounded. Now he can say he’s won two of his last three, both via knockout.

On top of all that, Michael Bisping, the guy Henderson once bashed into permanent meme-dom, just became the UFC middleweight champion.

How can anyone honestly expect the man to walk away now? How could you possibly make the case to him that he needs to, or that there’s nothing to be gained by sticking with it just a little while longer?

In most instances you could tell a legend in his mid-forties that his legacy is secure, the money isn’t worth it, and the risks are too great. But part of Henderson’s legacy is that he never won a UFC title. Current circumstances being what they are, it is not at all difficult to imagine him convincing the UFC to give him one last try for old times’ sake. And if he gets that far, then he’s just one H-bomb away from checking that last achievement off the list.

And, once again, there’s the money to consider.

The more you think about it, the more it seems like it would take a shocking amount of restraint and forbearance for Henderson to call it quits now, just because he happens to be old (you know, for a fighter) and at the end of another contract.

But one of the things about getting old in this sport is that eventually you might start to feel as if you’ve been through all this before. And, if you’re Henderson, you’ve survived it all, too.

He’s suffered knockouts and losing streaks. He’s shrugged off the questions about his expiration date and added more zeroes to his paychecks. It’s one thing to tell him to quit while he’s ahead, but the thing about quitting – especially at his age – is that it’s just so permanent.

He has the rest of his life to sit around on the couch and think about the career he used to have. How much longer does he have to maybe, possibly, potentially be a UFC champion?

With the possible exception of offering him money to do literally nothing, it’s hard to think of anything that anyone could say to make him forget that.