Fight fans are still talking about former UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping’s decision to take a short notice fight this past Saturday at UFC Shanghai against Kelvin Gastelum. This comes after a few weeks after he suffered a devastating loss to Georges St-Pierre at UFC 217 for the middleweight title.
As seen in the fight, it didn’t go very well for Bisping as he was brutally knocked out by Gastelum in the very first round.
This marked Bisping’s second brutal stoppage loss this month. Thus, after seeing this, it has brought attention and questions about the safety of allowing a fighter to compete so soon after suffering a serious loss.
One of those people who is talking about this topic is longtime UFC commentator Joe Rogan, who said on his JRE MMA Show podcast (transcript courtesy of MMA Fighting), that Bisping should not have been allowed to take the Gastelum fight.
“I don’t think you should be allowed to fight three weeks after you have a brutal fight like Michael Bisping did with GSP. He got rocked, he got choked unconscious, and then three weeks later, he’s fighting a really dangerous young and up-and-coming Kelvin Gastelum. Kelvin is a beast.
“Would he have been able to do that if he fought the Bisping who was training for Georges St-Pierre? If Bisping did not have the Georges St-Pierre fight and just went right into the Kelvin Gastelum fight, would the same result have happened?”
It should be noted that the three week turnaround was the shortest of Bisping’s career and the first time in that he has lost back-to-back fights.
The promotion wanted to save this card after former UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva was pulled from the main event for a USADA violation. While some can accept the reasoning behind the booking of the bout, some fight fans can’t believe it was made official.
Rogan understands that this is a perfect example of short-sighted and dangerous thinking because Bisping is never going to say “no,” even if he should.
“You really have to protect the fighter from themselves. You really can’t be letting a guy fight three weeks after an absolutely brutal fight like that. It just does not make sense. It does not make sense. I don’t think it’s smart.
“I understand the UFC needed someone to fill in on short notice because Anderson Silva tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs and they did not want to lose the Shanghai main event, so it turns into an even bigger fight when you’ve got the former middleweight champion right off his loss, three weeks later fighting again, but it’s just not smart. I know Bisping wanted to do it, and I know Bisping would probably do it again if you asked him to do it. If you asked Bisping to fight in a few weeks, he would probably do it again.”
“Someone was talking about him fighting in England, I believe in March. Boy, that’s less crazy, but still, crazy because we’re basically into December. So you’ve got December, January, February, three months off, really, and then March. But during that time he’s going to be sparring and you know Bisping, he’s a f**king animal. He’s not gonna take much time off. Fighters need time off after fights.”
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