Dana White has pulled the old bait-and-switch on us yet again.
Only days after saying that returning former welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre would meet the winner of the welterweight title fight between Tyron Woodley and Demain Maia in the co-main event of last night’s UFC 214 after GSP’s rumored fight with Michael Bisping was a ‘ship that had sailed,’ White laid into Woodley vs. Maia at the post-fight press conference after the bout failed to deliver in any way:
“What’d you think about watching the Woodley Maia fight? Listen, when you break a record for most for the leat punches in a five-round fight, a title fight, and you beat it by, it was 130 and these guys threw 60 or something like that, I think that sums it up.”
White was then asked if St-Pierre vs. Bisping was back on due to the lackluster nature of Woodley’s performance, to which the outspoken executive replied it was indeed was before explaining why:
“Yep. Yep. There you go. Because I know Michael Bisping will fight. Michael Bisping will show up and he will fight, so I’m gonna give it to him.”
Now, it’s fair to say that the long-tenured “Count,” who’s no doubt as reliable as any fighter in UFC history, isn’t exactly known for putting on the most earth-shattering performances in the octagon, as many online have perhaps given him a reputation for having no knockout power at all.
But with his recent finish of Luke Rockhold to win the belt at 2016’s UFC 199 coupled with his close, exciting victories over Anderson Silva and Dan Henderson, it’s hard to argue that Bisping is not exciting and willing to bring the action to his opponents. St-Pierre has obviously garnered his own reputation for being a safe, calculating fighter – perhaps more so than any other competitor in MMA after his upset loss to Matt Serra.
Taking that into account, a bout pitting a safe fighter like ‘GSP’ against Woodley, a champion with all the well-rounded skills in the world who simply appears to refuse to use them at times, has correctly been deemed a fight that would not be entertaining to the fans. Of course, interim middleweight champion Robert Whittaker should be getting the next rightful shot at the UFC 185-pound belt, but a knee injury suffered in his impressive decision victory over Yoel Romero at UFC 213 will keep him out of action until 2018.
White said Whittaker would fight the winner of Bisping vs. St-Pierre, but he did not yet have a date for the bout, which was revealed at a press conference prior to UFC 209 this March, an event where Woodley ironically put on another highly tentative performance versus Stephen Thompson.
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