Perennial UFC middleweight contender Michael Bisping is one of the best trash talkers in the business, so it’s no shock that he has been spewing a ton of verbal venom at UFC Fight Night 30 opponent Mark Munoz.
Sitting down to speak with Fighters Only’s John Joe O’Regan, The Count ripped Munoz on his “suspect chin” and how he doesn’t think The Filipino Wrecking Machine has the right mindset to excel at the highest level of this sport:
He’s got a suspect chin; Matt Hamill knocked him out cold, Kendall Grove nearly knocked him out, Demian Maia wobbled him. It seems in most of his fights he gets wobbled but like visibly wobbled, I don’t just mean he takes a shot, I mean he kind of wobbles and looks like he’s on his way out, you know? He was saved by the bell against Kendall Grove.
He’s a nice guy, he’s one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. But this isn’t a sport for nice guys and I’m not gonna go in there trying to be his friend. It’s a disciplined sport, it takes a lot of skill and so on. There are many qualities that you need but being a nice guy isn’t one of them. So for now we can forget about him being a nice guy.
Despite the harsh criticism about being able to take a punch, Munoz has only been knocked out twice in 16 professional fights: once in a light heavyweight bout with Matt Hamill in 2009 and then by current UFC middleweight champ Chris Weidman in July 2012.
After essentially a year off from the cage to recover from various nagging injuries, the Reign Training Center standout beat down Tim Boetsch for the better part of three rounds at their UFC 162 encounter in July.
With the victory, Munoz has now won five of his past six fights.
Meanwhile, Bisping is 4-2 in his past six matchups, defeating then-fringe contenders Brian Stann and Alan Belcher and losing title eliminator bouts to Chael Sonnen and Vitor Belfort during that 26-month time span.
UFC Fight Night 30 takes place at the Phones 4u Arena in Bisping‘s backyard, Manchester, United Kingdom, on Oct. 26 with Bisping vs. Munoz serving as the event’s headlining bout.
Will Bisping be able to back up his harsh words, or will Munoz get the fight to the mat and unleash his signature violent ground-and-pound on his English counterpart?
John Heinis is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report. He is also the MMA Editor for eDraft.com.
Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com