Michael Bisping toasts former UFC middleweight champion Luke Rockhold farewell
From one UFC Hall of Famer to another future UFC Hall of Famer, Michael Bisping toasts Luke Rockhold farewell and wishes the 37-year-old all the best in retirement.
Bisping and Rockhold might not have seen eye to eye as competitors, with both men fierce rivals during their UFC heydays, but that’s all water under the bridge now that both men have retired and put their fighting careers behind them.
Rockhold retired following a gutsy performance against Paulo Costa last Saturday at UFC 278, but Bisping still doesn’t think the former UFC and Strikeforce middleweight champion gets the respect he deserves.
Bisping thinks Rockhold is massively underappreciated and that most fans don’t fully respect what the latter had accomplished throughout his career, winning multiple world titles and defeating a who’s who of top contenders and former champions, including Lyoto Machida, Ronaldo Souza, Chris Weidman, and of course, himself.
“I wish you all the best in retirement, Luke. I really, really do mean that,” Bisping, who is tied 1-1 with Rockhold, said on his YouTube channel (h/t MMA Fighting). “I know we had some back and forths over the years, but it was just competitive. Just rivals, sporting rivals. I’m sure if we met under different circumstances — in fact, I always said this — I’m sure we’d get along. We’ve got some mutual friends and Jason Parillo thinks the world of you as well. So congratulations in what you do.”
“It’s weird because he was always a guy who was kind of subject to a lot of ridicule. And I know I didn’t help a lot of stuff with the ‘Conceive, believe, achieve’ thing and I kind of turned him into a little bit of a meme, but that’s what you do. When you’re fighting each other, you make fun of one another. Then obviously he was always ‘a little bit arrogant,’ but you need that. You have to be arrogant as a fighter. You’re stepping foot into an octagon, in front of 20,000 people, with the entire world watching. Believe it or not, you have to have some self-belief and you have to have confidence. So that was always the issue there. Maybe he was a little misunderstood, maybe some of the things didn’t come out the right way, but Saturday night, when the fight was done, when the dust was settled, we saw from Luke Rockhold a look into him. He pulled back the curtain, you got to see the real Luke, and he was very emotional, and rightly so.”
“Luke, I do believe is underappreciated by a lot of people,” Bisping added. “The run that he had, the career that he had, Strikeforce champion, UFC champion, always a top contender, always in big fights, always took on the best challenges. I mean look at that, he just came back after three years of being away and took on Paulo Costa, one of the toughest guys in the division, one of the top guys, one of the hardest hitting and one of the hardest hitting with the best chins. There’s not a lot of people queueing up to take on that guy when they’ve been out of the octagon for three years…
“To go out there and lose three of your last four, all by knockout, to then go and take three years away from the sport and come back and go right in, co-main event, in a pay-per-view, against Paulo Costa, an absolute killer, that tells you the measure of the man. That tells you what the man is made of and what he thinks of himself and the kind of challenges and risks he’s willing to take… So Luke, whatever you’re going to do in retirement, mate, enjoy. You had a fantastic career. I think people still don’t give him the credit that he was due, but I do.”
Rockhold announced retirement following his unanimous decision defeat and Fight of the Night with Costa at UFC 278, marking one of the greatest sendoffs in UFC history.
Check it out below.