Robert Whittaker isn’t worried about the rumors of Yoel Romero’s past performance enhancing drug (PED) use. Whittaker will do battle with Romero inside the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada for UFC 213. The bout is going to be for the interim Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) middleweight title. Reigning champion Michael Bisping hasn’t been shy […]
Robert Whittaker isn’t worried about the rumors of Yoel Romero’s past performance enhancing drug (PED) use. Whittaker will do battle with Romero inside the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada for UFC 213. The bout is going to be for the interim Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) middleweight title. Reigning champion Michael Bisping hasn’t been shy […]
It appears as though UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping was involved in a random search at an airport that resulted in him needing to be removed from his Norwegian flight. Bisping took to Twitter to comment on the matter: 1 of 2-Norwegian airlines just removed me from my flight for a random search. Including searching […]
It appears as though UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping was involved in a random search at an airport that resulted in him needing to be removed from his Norwegian flight.
Bisping took to Twitter to comment on the matter:
1 of 2-Norwegian airlines just removed me from my flight for a random search. Including searching my seat in case maybe I hid something lol
Bisping has had a crazy ride as it pertains to his mixed martial arts (MMA) career as of late after winning the UFC 185-pound title from Luke Rockhold via first round knockout last year. “The Count” made his first title defense against a then-No. 14-ranked Dan Henderson in his hometown of London, England via unanimous decision.
It was expected that Bisping would make his next title defense against former UFC welterweight champ Georges St-Pierre, who has come out of retirement after signing a new multi-fight deal with the UFC, but it was later called off by UFC President Dana White after St-Pierre said he wouldn’t be ready to fight until after October.
Now, White has implemented an interim middleweight title bout between No. 1-ranked Yoel Romero and No. 3-ranked Robbert Whittaker in the co-main event of UFC 213 next month (Sat. July 8, 2017). It is expected that Bisping will fight the winner of that bout after he has recovered from a lingering knee injury.
What are your thoughts on Bisping potentially defending his title against either Romero or Whittaker?
UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping’s time in the Octagon could be drawing to a close sooner than you thought. “The Count” secured the UFC’s 185-pound strap back in June of last year in the main event of UFC 199, where he knocked out Luke Rockhold in the first round. He then went on to defend […]
UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping’s time in the Octagon could be drawing to a close sooner than you thought.
“The Count” secured the UFC’s 185-pound strap back in June of last year in the main event of UFC 199, where he knocked out Luke Rockhold in the first round. He then went on to defend his title against a then-No. 14-ranked Dan Henderson at UFC 204 in October, winning the bout via unanimous decision.
Bisping was expected to defend his title against the returning former welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre at a time and venue yet to-be-determined, however, St-Pierre stated he wouldn’t be able to return until after October, which didn’t fit UFC President Dana White’s plans who scrapped the bout as a result.
Now, an interim middleweight title has been put in place and will be contested for between No. 1-ranked Yoel Romero and No. 3-ranked Robbert Whittaker at the UFC 213 pay-per-view (PPV) next month (Sat. July 8, 2017). Bisping took to his podcast, Believe You Me, to comment on the interim title bout and predicted Whittaker to emerge victorious.
Furthermore, the Englishman predicts that he’d beat either Romero or Whittaker once he returns to the Octagon before having his ‘farewell’ bout in the U.K. (quotes via FOX Sports):
“My next fight, I don’t know where it’s going to be. It’s probably going to be unfortunately not GSP [Georges St-Pierre]. It’s probably going to be the winner of [Robert] Whittaker and [Yoel] Romero. I don’t know where that fight’s going to be and I see myself winning that fight because I see Whittaker winning that fight and I see myself beating Whittaker. If Romero wins, I see myself beating him as well. But I firmly believe that it will be Robert Whittaker,” Bisping said.
“Win or lose that fight, I’ll probably have one more and I want that to be in London or Manchester or the U.K. I want it to be in England. I want to have my last fight, I want to say farewell. The fans for me in England have treated me so well, they really have. The MMA fans out there have really embraced me as one of their own of course and it made a different in my career. So I want my last fight to be in England.”
Without a truly bankable star having fought in 2017, the MMA world was waiting with great anticipating for the return of longtime former welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre when it was announced “Rush” would meet middleweight champion Michael Bisping at a later-to-be-determined date sometime this year. That is, until the saga of St-Pierre, who appeared alongside […]
Without a truly bankable star having fought in 2017, the MMA world was waiting with great anticipating for the return of longtime former welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre when it was announced “Rush” would meet middleweight champion Michael Bisping at a later-to-be-determined date sometime this year.
That is, until the saga of St-Pierre, who appeared alongside “the Count” at a highly-publicized press conference the day before March’s UFC 209, took a strange turn after he released a video revealing he wouldn’t be able to fight until November. UFC President Dana White then revealed that Bisping would fight number one contender Yoel Romero instead, a fight that ultimately couldn’t be book on accord of “The Count” having a nagging knee injury he had surgery on earlier this year.
Romero was booked to face surging contender Robert Whittaker at UFC 213 in July, and St-Pierre then revealed the real reason why he needed a long-off date for his rumored match with Bisping. An eye injury that will keep him out of sparring until September is to blame, and during an interview on today’s The MMA Hour, he discussed why he didn’t want to reveal that to the public at the impromptu presser earlier this year:
“When the fight got announced with the press conference, we knew that we couldn’t fight in the summer. UFC knew as well that I couldn’t fight in the summer. They knew that I had an eye injury, but we still did the press conference, and I felt very uncomfortable during this whole time.
“Everybody has advisors, and I was advised to not talk about it, not talk about my eye injury. As an athlete, you don’t want to talk about these things. If you know about it now, it’s because this whole thing became out of proportion, it turned into a very negative thing. As athletes, we all have injuries and don’t want to talk about this, because it gives you weaknesses, something that your opponent can exploit.
“It’s an eye injury, and it’s a long healing process. I had surgery done and everything is OK. It’s just, there’s a lapse of time, minimum time, that I need to wait before I go back and train, especially if I take a risk to get hit on my eyes, because it can damage (my eye permanently), because my vision has not recovered 100 percent yet. It will be fine, everything is fine. It’s just, I need to wait for the lapse of time that the doctor asked me to wait for, and it’s in September that I can start sparring again.”
Photo: Joe Camporeale – USA TODAY Sports
St-Pierre also said he hadn’t been informed that his fight with Bisping was officially off yet – signifying it could still happen – and he attributed White’s announcement to his emotional attitude before praising the successful promoter:
Just what I’ve heard in the news. But Dana, he’s a very emotional person. He’s a very emotional person, and I understand that. You need to be emotional in this game. The way he is, Dana is the best. Like I said, he’s the best promoter, pound-for-pound, of all-time, and he can sell you every fight. It’s crazy. He’s the best. He can sell you anything, like, he’s so good at it. And I’m sure if he still wants to make this fight, we can make it. It’s up to him.
“Things with Dana are hard. I have people that their job is public relations and they deal with the UFC people, and sometimes all the stuff that I hear from Dana is from the reporters. Stuff that I hear, all the time, are [from] the reporters. It explodes like a bomb that I didn’t know. So I guess it’s the same thing for him on this fight.”
So while the fight may be off for now, St-Pierre reaffirmed his desire to face Bisping at some point because he simply wants to hurt the brash veteran ‘real bad’:
“I want to fight Michael Bisping. For me, personally, that’s the man I want to fight. As much as I respect him as an athlete — even though he’s been very arrogant and cocky with me, I respect him as an athlete — but if I fight him, I’m going to hurt him real bad. That, I can promise you.”
Finally, St-Pierre revealed that when he does finally come back to the sport he dominated after four years off, he’s going to try to make more history. However, “Rush” closed by saying that if he loses at any point during his comeback, he will retire for good:
“I’m at one fight for retiring for good, this I can tell you for sure. If I come back and I lose, this is it for me. Yes, his is it for me. If I come back and I lose, it’s finished; this I can tell you for sure. Because it’s over, I don’t wanna hang there and become a punching bag for younger people. I do not believe I’m gonna lose, I think I’m at my best, my trainer believe I’m at my best.
“I put a lot on the line, and I know that if I come back, it’s because I believe I’m a much better person that what I was and I wanna go back to another shot and rewrite history, but if down the road, if I lose, I pass the torch, it’s over, it’s finished. It’s a lot of pressure, and that’s why I will be fighting at my best because I will be fighting like there’s no tomorrow.”
Conor McGregor is a master on the mic, Chael Sonnen can cut a promo like no other and Dominick Cruz is as smart and insightful as anyone in the sport, but let’s face it, there’s plenty of fighters out there who don’t share their gift for the gab. You can’t blame them. After all, you […]
Conor McGregor is a master on the mic, Chael Sonnen can cut a promo like no other and Dominick Cruz is as smart and insightful as anyone in the sport, but let’s face it, there’s plenty of fighters out there who don’t share their gift for the gab.
You can’t blame them. After all, you try busting out your snappiest one-liners and lucid streams of consciousness live on air after 15 minutes of getting punched and kicked in the head, as thousands of fans yell in the background and millions around the world judge you on your every word.
Nonetheless, it would be remise of us not to notice that moments like these often provide the perfect breeding ground for some of the most unintentionally hilarious quotes you’re ever likely to hear, and so in this article we’ll pay tribute to 10 of the very best of them!
Tito Ortiz
Tito Ortiz has truly proven himself to be a black belt in World Salad over the years.
For instance, who can forget the time he served as Affliction’s in-cage interviewer for their ‘Banned’ show in 2008.
”I want to tell me what you see. Let’s go ahead and see by the fight, what you saw, in the ring,” he incoherently babbled to Renato ‘Babalu’ Sobral.
That night Ortiz would take to calling Sobral, “Seraldo”, Russian heavyweight legend Fedor Emelianenko, “Theodore,” and of course not forgetting, “Matt ‘The Lindland’ Law.”
Then there’s the time Ortiz mused that strategizing as a coach on ‘The Ultimate Fighter’ show was, “like a game of chest.”
However, if there’s one quote that stands out like a shining beacon from the rest, it has to be when he humbly declared:
”God put me on this earth to be a tool.”
Later in that same Bellator 120 presser, Ortiz would answer a question about retirement by stating that, “When I start sounding retarded, perhaps its time to stop.”
No one had the heart to tell him and he’d go on to fight for three more years.
One of the bigger – and perhaps the largest – messes in a down first five months of 2017 for the UFC was the failed attempt at booking longtime welterweight boss Georges St-Pierre’s awaited comeback fight against current middleweight champion Michael Bisping. The bout was announced in March, with the promotion putting on a hastily […]
One of the bigger – and perhaps the largest – messes in a down first five months of 2017 for the UFC was the failed attempt at booking longtime welterweight boss Georges St-Pierre’s awaited comeback fight against current middleweight champion Michael Bisping.
The bout was announced in March, with the promotion putting on a hastily thrown-together press conference at UFC 209 despite the fact that St-Pierre repeatedly insisted he wouldn’t be able to make it to the cage until October at the earliest (even if Dana White wanted him to fight in July) and Bisping having undergone knee surgery not long before the announcement.
That justifiably lead to mass outcry from the majority of the currently jam-packed middleweight landscape, with everyone from Luke Rockhold to Anderson Silva calling the fight a terrible decision that only served to further delay the champion defending against a truly deserving title contender. The wheels predictably fell off the bout when the superstar released a video reiterating his stance that he could only fight after October. White then announced that they would no longer wait for “Rush” to return and Bisping would fight consensus contender Yoel Romero for the belt.
But with “The Count” allegedly still nursing a knee injury, the promotion was left with no other choice to book Romero vs. surging young contender Robert Whittaker for the interim belt at UFC 213, somewhat solving the puzzling title picture that will only come together when Bisping is able to defend the belt. He’s been holding out for the huge payday St-Pierre will no doubt bring, and indeed the fight may still happen.
However, as we wait to see what happens in the head-scratching mess that has followed the fight’s original unveiling, St-Pierre came out with some revealing information as to just why he could not fight this summer. Speaking up in an interview with Justin Kingsley at today’s C2 Montreal conference (via MMA Fighting), the MMA star detailed an eye injury that will keep him from sparring until the fall:
“Trust me, I’m not the kind of guy who thinks, ‘Hey, I’m going to make everybody wait for me. I don’t want to fight during the summer, I want to take my time …That’s not the reason. If it were up to me, I would come back. The reason is I had a problem with my eye. I had an injury. My vision has not been back yet. It will be back. It’s something very minor. The doctor insisted for me that I don’t spar until September.”
And while the UFC still lobbied him to fight in July, St-Pierre insisted they knew the timetable for his comeback but staged the press conference anyway:
“The UFC was aware of it. They knew I couldn’t fight during the summer, but they still insisted on doing that press conference with Michael Bisping. And when it happened, we were not very excited about the idea, but we wanted that fight, so we decided to do it, but then it turned into a negative thing because it took so long.
“But UFC knew. Everyone knew. The people concerned knew that that was the case, but they still tried to put pressure on me to fight in July. That’s the reason why I’m coming out public today about the reason why I’m not fighting this summer.”
So many fans and media members may be growing impatient about the superstar’s highly anticipated and long-awaited return but the longtime champion reaffirmed his belief that he has to be in the best shape possible if and when he faces the middleweight champion, because he’s putting his nearly spotless legacy on the line by even setting foot back in the octagon:
“I always said that if I was coming back to fight, it needed to be a fight that excites me. I wanted to fight Michael Bisping because I wanted to fight someone that could elevate me. Michael Bisping is the champion now, and I think that he could elevate me as much as I could elevate him. I’m taking a huge risk coming back. I’m putting my legacy on the line.”
