Michael Bisping successfully defended his middleweight title at UFC 204 on Saturday, wringing a tight decision from the judges in his native Manchester, England. The 37-year-old champion has now won five fights in a row, taking out the legendary Anderson Silva, new-school kingpin Luke Rockhold and now his nemesis Dan Henderson in quick succession.
Yet Bisping has achieved this success with more than a few caveats about the state of his competition. This leaves a few salient questions about where Bisping stands in the weight class he now rules. How will he fare against the elite competition at the top of the middleweight division? Can he retain his title against the likes of Chris Weidman, Yoel Romero and Jacare Souza?
Bleacher Report’s Steven Rondina and Patrick Wyman debate how Bisping stacks up against his fellow top 185-pounders.
Patrick: There’s no denying the impressiveness of Bisping’s accomplishments in the last two years. Since losing to Rockhold in November 2014, he’s run off five wins, beating C.B. Dollaway, Thales Leites, Silva, Rockhold to win the title and now Henderson to defend it.
That’s a great list of scalps, but there are also asterisks.
Dollaway isn’t a top-15 fighter and Leites is just hanging around the fringes of the top 10, and neither was a resounding victory. Silva nearly finished Bisping and the decision, though unanimous, was still close and contentious; Rockhold had only two weeks to prepare following Weidman’s withdrawal and went into the fight with a Grade II MCL sprain; Henderson was 46 and had compiled a 4-6 record in his last 10 fights.
I’m not normally a fan of this kind of resume-questioning, and Bisping has earned the right to be where he is right now, but in this case the caveats are simply too big to ignore. What say you, Steven? Is it fair to question Bisping’s recent run?
Steven: Well, Patrick, you might not like it, but I live to question resumes and boy howdy, have I questioned the heck out of Bisping’s resume.
Is Bisping the rightful UFC champion? Yes. Did he win the title fair and square? Yes. Does he live up to the legacy and prestige of the title? Yes. But does that undo all of the flimsiness we’ve seen from Bisping over the years? Heck no.
Bisping came a hair away from losing to Silva. He was one judge away from losing to Leites. He was one fence grab away from losing to Dollaway. There are lots of alternate universes out there where Bisping didn’t win the title at UFC 199, and there are probably even more where he didn’t even get a shot at the championship in the first place.
Bisping is a very good fighter and, again, earned that title. But his numerous losses over the years and shakiness against even middling competition disqualify him from being the best in the world in his weight class.
Not to plug the official Bleacher Report MMA rankings too hard, but I have Bisping ranked as the No. 3 middleweight behind Luke Rockhold and Chris Weidman. Personally, I think that’s fair.
Patrick: I can’t really argue with any of that. It’s worth remembering that he got his title shot at UFC 199 on the basis of Weidman’s injury two weeks out; Bisping happened to be in shape, and the fight happened to be in the city where he now lives, Los Angeles.
That’s a series of fortunate coincidences, and while Bisping made the most of his shot by jumping on a hurt Rockhold and finishing him, they’re lucky breaks nonetheless.
It’s worth digging into how Bisping stacks up against his competition at the top of the division. He’s 1-1 against Rockhold, but otherwise his only win over a top-10 opponent came against an obviously diminished Silva. Even then, Silva still came within a hair’s breadth of finishing Bisping at the end of the third round in that fight.
So how would he do against Weidman, Jacare Souza or Yoel Romero?
I can’t honestly say I’d favor him in a single one of those fights, or even in a rematch against Rockhold. Bisping is fighting at his best right now and has made real improvements to his game in recent years, namely with his footwork and his ability to exchange punches in the pocket. Even as the champion, however, he still has some deep flaws.
He’s a slow starter and needs a little while to work up to his preferred pace. Power isn’t his strong suit, and he only really sits down on his punches in the later rounds, when he’s sure that his opponent is wearing down. Against Henderson, he had been so scared by the big right hands early (justifiably, to be sure) that he never set his feet to throw with power.
The 46-year-old Henderson was able to land brutal counters when he got lazy with his lead hand, a flaw that has bedeviled Bisping for the better part of the last decade. Even in his younger years, he has never taken a great punch, and that’s not going to get better at the tender age of 37.
What do you think of those matchups, Steven? Is there anyone in the middleweight elite you’d favor Bisping to beat?
Steven: I actually dissent from you a bit there. I’d pick him to lose a rubber match with Rockhold without a second thought. The same goes for a fight with Weidman.
Romero and Souza, though? Not so much.
Romero is an absurdly powerful man but he gets remarkably sloppy once his gas tank starts running low. Just look at his fight at UFC 194. Sure, he could snap Bisping in half with a takedown the way he did Lyoto Machida last year, but if the fight goes past the second round, all bets are off.
As for Souza, I just don’t buy into him as the unstoppable monster so many others do. He has some great tools, but we haven’t really seen them used against prime competition. He has thrived in the UFC, for the most part, by cutting the cage without any difficulty and I wouldn’t be shocked in the least if they didn’t hold up against a fighter as savvy as Bisping.
All that said, I wouldn’t confidently pick Bisping over either of them!
So who do you think is next for Bisping? It’s a bit tough to pin down at this point with all four of them set to fight in the near future, but who do you think will challenge the champ next?
Patrick: While I’m almost certain Rockhold would win the rubber match and Weidman, if he could stay healthy, would beat him like a drum, your points about Souza and Romero are well taken.
Romero’s sheer dynamism and freakish athletic gifts are a huge problem for a fighter like Bisping, who is essentially defined by his lack of those things, but Bisping’s cardio would present major issues if the fight went longer than eight minutes or so. The same holds true against Souza, who isn’t exactly a cardio machine himself.
The problem there is survival. Bisping’s not exactly hot out of the gate, and both Romero and Souza are perfectly capable of walking him down, slamming him to the mat and brutalizing him from top position. They’ve both done exactly that to more accomplished fighters than Bisping.
As for what comes next, it depends on who emerges victorious from Weidman-Romero at UFC 205 and Souza-Rockhold II two weeks later.
The UFC, I imagine, is hoping for Weidman and Rockhold. Even if it was due to a tainted supplement, Romero’s failed drug test can’t leave the promotion feeling good about his long-term promise as the champion. At this point, it seems clear that the UFC wants nothing to do with Jacare in a title fight; if they’d wanted to give him a shot at the belt, they would have done it two years ago.
Between Weidman and Rockhold, it depends on who can stay healthy. That’s much more likely to be Rockhold than Weidman, so I’d guess we’ll end up with the rubber match.
How does that sound to you, Steven?
Steven: It sounds good, but there is a major variable in play when it comes to both men’s recent gripes about pay. Rockhold pulled no punches when discussing his contract situation last month, flatly labeling it “bulls–t”. Weidman, similarly, hinted at a rift between himself and the current UFC ownership group, which nearly resulted in him being left off the UFC 205 card.
It wouldn’t be the least bit shocking if the UFC pulled a power move and passed over one of them for a title shot. And as you alluded to, it wouldn’t be the least bit shocking if Weidman, Romero or Souza broke something and wound up on the shelf for six months.
Personally, I’m rooting for another stop on the “Michael Bisping 2016 Revenge Tour.” Maybe the winner of UFC 205’s Tim Kennedy vs. Rashad Evans?
Patrick: Any way you slice it, there’s a profusion of interesting matchups waiting out there for Bisping. Whether any of them go his way is another story.
Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com