In a few weeks UFC middleweight Michael “The Count” Bisping (20-3) for the fourteenth time in his professional mixed martial arts career. He’s scheduled to meet Jorge Rivera at UFC 127 at Acer Arena in Sydney, Australia on Feb. 27.
Speaking to ESPN.co.UK, Bisping said a staph infection in his arm looked like it might force him to pull out of the fight.
Bisping is currently riding a two-fight win streak, and is 3-1 in his last four fights. He earned unanimous decisions in both those victories defeating Yoshihiro Akiyama at UFC 120, as well as the “Fight of the Night” bonus, and Dan Miller at UFC 114.
“It was something I picked up in October and then it flared up again at the start of camp. The first couple of weeks it was really bothering me, and I couldn’t really use my arm at one point. My manager did say to me, ‘maybe you’re gonna have to pull out of the fight’, but we still had time. Fortunately the antibiotics have cleared it all up and now the arm’s great. My manager was saying, ‘you’re doing great, hopefully we’re on our way to a title shot, so you don’t want to derail anything’. He wasn’t saying, ‘let’s pull out’, but he was saying that I should think about it. But we still had plenty of time and it cleared up.”