Bisping May Retire Or Fight At UFC London

On the latest edition of his Believe You Me podcast, Michael Bisping said that he has been offered a fight by the UFC for their upcoming event in London. Originally Bisping wanted to have his final fight in his home country, but after crushing losses at UFC 217 and UFC Shanghai, he is debating on whether to take it because his family and friends are urging him to retire from MMA.

“There’s a fight in the works for myself, and I’ve got until the end of the day to tell the UFC whether or not I’m taking it,” explained Bisping.

“There’s an offer that’s been made to me, and all fairness to the UFC, I’ve been kind of taking my time to give them an answer so I’ve got until the end of the day to give them an answer.”

“I’m just debating whether or not I take the fight. For me, whether or not those people can see, I have a bad eye. I have a bad eye and my wife doesn’t want me to continue fighting, and my manager doesn’t want me to continue fighting. I see out of that eye but not as well as I used to, and I’m still a young man so it’s kind of the reason I may hang the gloves up. My wife and manager and friends and people close to me say, ‘Mike, what do you want to do that for? You’ve done it. You’ve had the belt.’ I’ve done it. I’ve done what I set out to achieve.”

“I kind of want to go do one last fight in England and they’re like, ‘So what? Five years from now or a year from now, people are gonna forget about all that and you can injure yourself even more.’ but you can injure yourself in any fight, whether or not you’re at 100% health or not. So that’s what we’re up to and I don’t know.”

 

A former champion and the winner of the third season of the The Ultimate Fighter, Bisping has had a storied career and rose to be one of the sport’s most popular fighters. Yet, with a career threatening eye injury sustained in 2013 and the two most recent losses, it makes sense that his family and friends would caution against one last go around, but Bisping notes he has some real incentives to ignore those warnings.

“There’s the payday,” said Bisping. “I’ve got some lawsuit bullsh*t that’s still going on. I don’t know if you’re aware of this but lawyers are very expensive. Also, one doesn’t want to go out on my last fight, that being the lasting impression on my MMA career. Also, I kind of feel that I owe it to the U.K. fans because they were so supportive throughout my career. I always envisioned in my mind having that retirement fight in London and there it is on a plate. I just need to take it but everyone around me is telling me not to.”

“I like the fight,” said Bisping. “It’s not a case of the time or the opponent or anything like that. It’s either am I going to continue fighting or am I not? I promised my wife a long time ago that I was done fighting, promised a ton of people, but I still seem to be slogging on and doing it.

“Maybe we’ll have an announcement tomorrow, maybe we won’t.”