("So … you holdin’?" PicProps: Some dude’s blog)

It was pretty clear back in April that Dan Henderson came to Strikeforce: Nashville fully intending to knock Jake Shields out in the first round. When that didn’t quite happen, it looked to a lot of people watching at home like Henderson just took an “ah, fuck this” attitude to the next four rounds. In conceding a unanimous decision loss, Hendo sent Shields cruising to the UFC on a high note while simultaneously raising a lot of troubling questions about his own future in the sport and exactly what Strikeforce got when it signed the 40-year-old former Pride champ to a deal after Big DW passed on him.

Now, Henderson says it wasn’t boredom or lack of training that made him look like a guy who’d rather be back home in California wolfing down fish tacos and watching the tide roll in for the final 20-minutes of his promotional debut.  It was, uh, the pain pills. Yeah … not sure if this makes it better or worse, but Hendo recently told MMA Weekly that the meds he was taking for his aching back turned his weight cut to 185-pounds for that bout into a real doozy and that it left him feeling not quite himself by the time he stepped in the cage.

“It was just some medication I had took for my back that kind of helped keep the weight on me, and it just has to do with the pain I guess,” Henderson said. “I was just real flat that fight, and the weight cut really zapped me.”

Anyhoo, Hendo says he’s drug free these days and is totally not opposed to fighting at middleweight in the future … just, you know, not right now, as he’s set to take on Babalu Sobral in the main event of the upcoming Strikeforce show in Missouri on Dec. 4.  That fight will be at 205-pounds and CEO Scott Coker has implied that the winner could become the No. 1 contender for unlikely champion Rafael “Feijao” Cavalcante. Remember him? For now Henderson says it will be “more fun” to fight at light heavyweight for a little while as Strikeforce scrounges around for somebody, anybody to fight middleweight champ Jacare Souza.

“I never minded fighting at either weight, with the exception of my last fight,” Henderson said.  “I just think it’s funner to not have to cut weight.”

We’re cool with that, depending on what kind of fun you mean. Are we talking eat-that-extra-slice-of-pecan-pie-at-thanksgiving because you know you don’t have to make weight fun? Or are we talking get-as-gassed-up-on-Vicodin-and-Oxycodone-as-you-want because you know you don’t have to make weight fun?

J/K playa, j/k.

On a serious note however, even though – for the thousandth time – we don’t run a public relations firm here (so take this with a grain of salt) we’re still not sure falling back on the ol’ “Oh, my last fight? It was only shitty because of all the painkillers I was on at the time,” defense is the bestest strategy moving forward. But that’s just us.