Michael Bisping disagrees with Conor McGregor’s logic that “inactivity” led to his TKO loss to Dustin Poirier at UFC 257.
Saturday night at UFC 257 marked Conor McGregor’s first-ever TKO loss. And while he gave props to Dustin Poirier’s leg kicks, “The Notorious” also blamed his inactivity for the fight’s outcome.
“It’s hard to overcome inactivity over long periods of time. And that’s just it,” McGregor told Jon Anik in the Octagon interview. “The leg kicks were good, the low calf kick was very good. The leg was dead, and then I just wasn’t as comfortable as I needed to be. It’s the inactivity, and that’s it.
“I need activity, guys. You don’t get away with being inactive in this business, and that’s the way it is.”
But for UFC Hall-of-Famer Michael Bisping, that’s not always the case. “The Count” spoke to Chael Sonnen about it during the ESPN post-fight show, based on his own experience when he fought Georges St-Pierre in 2017.
“Georges St-Pierre came off the couch after three and a half years and choked me out unconscious,” Bisping said (via MMA Fighting). “A lot of people say that ring rust is a mental thing and it is. It’s a mental thing.
“If Conor was staying in the gym and doing everything he said, it wouldn’t be a factor. The reality is tonight he went out there and he got beat by Dustin Poirier. There’s no shame in that.
“At the end of the day you get ready, two people enter the cage, Dustin was the better man tonight. You can look for excuses. You can try and dissect it. The ultimate answer tonight the better man won the fight.”
The loss to Poirier led to McGregor dropping two spots down to number 15 at the UFC’s men’s pound-for-pound rankings. He also fell two notches at lightweight and is now at number six.