(Props: MMAFighting)
Despite Jason Miller‘s basic-cable cred, Michael Bisping will be the biggest UFC star to compete at the TUF 14 Finale on Saturday night. He’s also one of the biggest villains on the UFC roster — a fighter who fans love to hate. To some extent, you can blame that on reality show editing, which Bisping in fact does, starting at the 10:18 mark of this video interview. But he’s also been responsible for some real-life behavior that’s just nasty and wrong. Like Josh Koscheck, the villain persona that has been hoisted on Bisping seems to be an exaggerated version of what’s already there.
In this 20-minute pre-fight chat, Ariel Helwani gets the Count’s thoughts on his fight with Mayhem Miller, and attempts to reconcile Michael Bisping the bully character with Michael Bisping the human being. Here’s a cheat sheet…
— The smaller scale of the TUF 14 Finale doesn’t feel any different to him than his bigger fights, though it’s a bit of a disappointment not to be on a big PPV card.
— Six of Bisping’s last seven opponents have gone to the hospital afterwards, and Mayhem will be heading there as well.
— He doesn’t like being considered a “bad boy,” and has done nothing to purposefully play up that image. He’s often said things out of emotion that he regrets later.
— Haters hate on the Internet. In person, they show love.
— He’s happy as a pig in shit, most of the time.
— The footage of Bisping acting like a nice person in this episode was left on the cutting room floor, which annoyed him.
— “Mutual respect” is probably the wrong way to describe the relationship between Bisping and Miller.
— Bisping would be happy to meet Chael Sonnen in his next fight. He’s never ducked anybody in his career, unlike Nate Marquardt, who Bisping claims ducked him twice.
— Steroids are “a massive problem” in MMA, and he knows that a lot of fighters use them. He also questions the idea that alpha-male MMA fighters would need testosterone therapy. (At 16:15, he thinks of something funny related to sex-changes, but doesn’t say it. Good man, you’re learning.) Of course, the two things are linked: “When you abuse steroids, that does affect your natural production of testosterone, hence, therefore, if you need testosterone replacement therapy…I would say that the people taking that have been abusing steroids in the past and therefore have low testosterone.”
— Bisping knows for a fact that his camp didn’t leak any information to Miller, but he couldn’t care less even if they had. Mayhem could watch Bisping’s training himself and it wouldn’t make a difference in their fight.
— Bisping’s prediction for the fight: “I’m going to beat him in all areas.”