Michael Bisping might not have a point at which he truly turned into a villain.
He wasn’t exactly loved when he was a contestant on The Ultimate Fighter. He has always had a big mouth. There is even his contentious win over Matt Hamill who was a fan favorite.
Fans can even go back to this last year when he disrespected Jorge Rivera and his team after knocking Rivera out.
His reason? Rivera had put out videos that made fun of Bisping.
Bisping has had no trouble slandering other fighters and yet it seems like it became a classic case of “willing to dish it out, but not wanting to take it.”
Every single one of these qualities has made fans in America, and some globally, rejoice every time the Brit loses.
The problem for them is that he doesn’t seem to do it that often and he didn’t do it last night.
In fact, he has won his last four fights and against tough competitors like Dan Miller, Jorge Rivera, Yoshihiro Akiyama and now Jason Miller.
Don’t let Miller’s goofy antics fool you. He is someone who has easily earned fights with the UFC’s top middleweights. His only recent losses were to Jake Shields and Rounaldo Souza, both of who are Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu experts.
Aside from them, he has beaten decent contenders such as Tim Kennedy and Robbie Lawler. He needed a win against Bisping to take a serious step up in competition and he failed, but he wasn’t a scrub who the UFC used to get ratings for TUF.At this point, Bisping has lost against only three men. Rashad Evans, Dan Henderson and Wanderlei Silva. All of them were champions and two of the three have had Hall of Fame careers. Evans might still one day.
And Bisping is still in his prime, continuing to improve.
He was able to knock out Miller which is tough to do. The fact that Bisping, who usually goes the distance, was able to stop his opponent shows that he is transitioning from a perennial contender in the middleweight division into something better.
And fans who despise him might just have to get used to it because it seems Bisping might have a lengthy stay in the main-event scene.
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