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Michael Bisping Offers Extremely Bold Prediction For UFC 217

Currently on the sidelines for nearly a full year, UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping has been derided as one of the worst UFC titleholders in recent memory for his accused unwillingness to take on the top contenders in the talented 185-pound fray. But that’s just fine with him, as his meticulously planned ‘maneuvering’ has earned […]

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But that’s just fine with him, as his meticulously planned ‘maneuvering’ has earned him – deserved or not – a title fight with longtime former welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre in the main event of November 4’s UFC 217 from Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Although the bout will feature the previously awaited comeback of one of MMA’s biggest overall stars in St-Pierre, the growing consensus from the majority of the mixed martial arts community is that it’s a strange fight considering St-Pierre has never fought in the division and will have been out for almost exactly four years by fight time. Again, however, it’s the perceived payday Bisping appears to be looking for, and even though he doesn’t exactly have the best dance partner in terms of trash talk, that, of course, won’t stop the brash “Count” from spouting off on “GSP.”

Case in point, he recently offered a bold prediction for the title fight on his “Believe You Me” podcast this week (via MMA Junkie), claiming he will stop St-Pierre’s grappling with his movement and knock him out in the first round:

“Generally, when I fight wrestlers in the past, I move around a lot,” Bisping said. “I utilize a lot of lateral movement, forward and back movement, side-to-side, because if you’re moving, it’s hard for a wrestler to shoot a double leg on you because you’re a moving target. I won’t be doing that this time.

“I’m going to stand right in front of him, I’m going to plant my feet, I’m going to walk him down, put him on the back foot, and I’m going to knock him out in the first round. You have my word.”

Photo Credit: Joe Camporeale – USA TODAY Sports

St-Pierre has only been knocked out in the first round once in his infamous upset loss to Matt Serra at UFC 69 in 2007. It’s regarded as the bout that caused “Rush” to turn from a risk-taking knockout artist to a much more cautious wrestling-centered fighter who picked opponents apart with superior athleticism and gameplans.

It’s true that Bisping has shown he’s more than willing to push the pace at his opponents, especially during his recent run of success where he’s done just that against Anderson Silva and Dan Henderson, but aside from his title-winning knockout of Luke Rockhold at June 2016’s UFC 199, it hasn’t translated into many knockout stoppages.

Perhaps he can score another by facing a man who competed his entire career at 170 pounds and has been out of fighting for quite a long stretch. Do you believe Bisping will knock out St-Pierre?

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Miesha Tate Picks Conor McGregor Over GSP

Following his TKO loss to Floyd Mayweather in “The Money Fight” on August 26, the MMA world is anxiously awaiting just what UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor’s next move will be. A rumor recently surfaced that longtime former welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre would call out “The Notorious” if he were to get by middleweight champion Michael […]

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Following his TKO loss to Floyd Mayweather in “The Money Fight” on August 26, the MMA world is anxiously awaiting just what UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor’s next move will be.

A rumor recently surfaced that longtime former welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre would call out “The Notorious” if he were to get by middleweight champion Michael Bisping in his comeback bout in the main event of November 4’s UFC 217 from New York, and it’s hardly a bad idea given the UFC’s need for big-name bouts after a horrendous 2017.

So that’s naturally lead to some discussion about whom would win the proposed super fight, and former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Miesha Tate recently weighed in on the topic on her “MMA Tonight” podcast (via MMA Fighting). According to “cupcake,” McGregor has proven her wrong when she doubted him, so she can no longer count him out.

In her eyes, he holds the speed advantage over the larger GSP – in addition to a strategic edge:

“Conor McGregor, I’ve underestimated the guy a number of times, thinking he wasn’t going to win some of the fights that he won and he did it. The man is truly in a league of his own. When it comes to his game planning, when it comes to his trash talking, when it comes to getting inside people’s heads, nobody does it better than Conor McGregor. So I absolutely would not count him out in a fight like that.

“I think the speed favors him. I think he has great striking and I think the fact that GSP’s been out for so long, I think Conor McGregor can put together a strategy to beat pretty much anybody and I think the matchup actually favors Conor.”

High praise from a woman who’s been around the top levels of the sport for many years, one who’s admittedly a St-Pierre fan. She knows the precision he brings to the octagon, yet gave McGregor a mental edge she deemed difficult to get around for the all-time great:

“I feel almost bad saying that because I’ve been a huge GSP fan for a really long time. He’s perfect when he fights. Maybe not the most exciting fighter you’ve ever watched but he’s almost perfect and that’s so hard to do. If you’ve been an athlete in any sport, to have a perfect game or a perfect match or a perfect bout, it almost never happens.

“You watch him go out there and he’s pretty much perfect in all of his fights. He never waivers from his strategy and he’s like a robot, like somebody’s controlling a controller somewhere and he’s just doing exactly what he needs to do to get through those fights. But I think with this one, Conor’s just so hard to beat and he’s so hard to get around mentally. I think the speed actually, being the smaller guy, does favor Conor.”

Met with at least some degree of doubt, Tate acknowledged that picking the Irish star over St-Pierre may sound a bit crazy, but cited the fact that McGregor has predicted the result of many of his high-profile bouts.

She thought he was going to lose to Nate Diaz in their UFC 202 rematch, and he did not. Tate also thinks St-Pierre has never been made to deal with the nonstop mental onslaught of an elite trash talker like McGregor, something that could affect the fight.

To top it all off, Tate thought he would be easily handled by Mayweather in the boxing ring, yet he again proved her wrong by lasting 10 rounds with arguably the greatest defensive boxer of all time. For that reason, the still-evolving McGregor would do well against the returning – and rusty – all-time great former champion in the potential match:

“Yes. I know that sounds crazy, but dude, crazier things have been said about Conor and he’s done it. He literally predicts his exact what he’s gonna do in every fight. When he lost to Nate Diaz, I thought he was gonna lose again and he came out and he had the right game plan. He’s just brilliant. He knows how to figure out people.

“Not to mention, GSP has never had to deal with someone’s berating, that constant mental barrage that Conor McGregor does. Something is there. People haven’t quite figured it out but there’s something, an element that Conor McGregor adds that’s not just his skillset. He gets inside people’s heads and he ruins them before they even step inside the octagon. To say that he couldn’t do to GSP when he’s done it to everyone else, it’s insane to think that he couldn’t do that.

“So I just think he would probably do well. He’s evolving, he’s very athletic, he’s heavy-handed. I think he could knock out a lot of guys bigger than him. Look how well he did against Mayweather. I was so impressed with how he did there. I thought he was gonna lose that fight handily and he hung in there tough.”

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Rumor: GSP Will Call Out Conor McGregor With UFC 217 Win

Legendary longtime former UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre will finally return to the cage after nearly four years off when he faces middleweight champion Michael Bisping in the main event of November 4’s UFC 217 from Madison Square Garden in New York City, New York. Many have derided the fight based on St-Pierre’s lengthy absence […]

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Many have derided the fight based on St-Pierre’s lengthy absence and the fact that he has never fought at middleweight, but the MMA legend has insisted he only wants to come back for the biggest and best fights. If he does get by ‘The Count,’ who’s gradually become the most hated man in the 185-pound division, he’s aiming for one that would be much, much bigger than even his fight versus Bisping indeed.

At least, that’s according to St-Pierre’s TriStar Gym training partner Olivier Aubin-Mercier, who revealed to TSN (via The Irish Mirror) that GSP will call out McGregor if he wins the middleweight title at UFC 217:

“I think what will be probable is that he will call out Conor after. That’s what I would do. I think for the UFC, it’s a really smart fight to do. It’s a win-win for them. Well, win-win, kind of, for short term.”

There’ve been whispers St-Pierre had a plan to eventually face the biggest name in mixed martial arts right now, and you couldn’t blame him, as a bout versus the ultra-popular “Notorious” would be the biggest UFC bout of all-time.

Following his record-setting pay-per-view (PPV) payday with Floyd Mayweather in the boxing ring last month, the lightweight champion is rumored to be coming back for a trilogy bout with longtime rival Nate Diaz, although it’s nothing but rumor at this point.

If St-Pierre can shake off the dust and beat the brash champion, who will have out of action for over a year when they finally meet, however, then he could have an arguably even bigger fish on the line if St-Pierre does call him out.

Which one do you want to see?

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Jorge Masvidal Recalls Encounter With ‘Drunken Hoe’ Michael Bisping

With rival Luke Rockhold calling middleweight champion Michael Bisping’s title reign ‘the worst in UFC history’ last night, ‘The Count’s’ scope of annoyance has now spread to the top of the UFC welterweight division as well. No. 4-ranked welterweight Jorge Masvidal, who will face former title contender Stephen ‘Wonderboy’ Thompson at Nov. 4’s UFC 217, […]

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With rival Luke Rockhold calling middleweight champion Michael Bisping’s title reign ‘the worst in UFC history’ last night, ‘The Count’s’ scope of annoyance has now spread to the top of the UFC welterweight division as well.

No. 4-ranked welterweight Jorge Masvidal, who will face former title contender Stephen ‘Wonderboy’ Thompson at Nov. 4’s UFC 217, where Bisping takes on returning legend Georges St-Pierre in the main event, recently told a head-scratching story to Submission Radio (via MMA Mania) that involved a drunken ‘Count’ and the UFC brass.

Needless to say, it has Bisping at the top of Masvidal’s list of ‘hoes to slap’ after Masvidal attempted to incite more of a faceoff but was met with only a dude-bro type response from ‘The Count’:

“Bitchping Michael, whatever. I just think that’s the number one hoe I gotta slap, man. You know, that dude is a child. I’ve seen him in Vegas, the first time I’ve seen him actually in all of my life, and it was after he said all types of craziness on social media and telling me something (like) ‘if he ever saw me.’

“So, I happened to be walking out of my hotel elevator and he’s getting out of a cab stumbling drunk, and this is like eight in the morning, and I see him and I just start staring at him and we were in the same line of path trajectory. He went completely the other side and just not focused on me, didn’t look at me, nothing. I look at him and I go, ‘Bisping, what’s up?’

“And I raise my hands up to see what his thought process is, what he’s thinking. And the whole UFC PR was in there and they was dying laughing because he threw up the cowabunga sign, just walked away and got in the elevator. And since then I knew he was a little hoe. I already knew before, but that like extra clarified it for me.”

Much of the criticism directed at Bisping has been based on his seeming willingness to avoid fighting the top contenders in the deeply talented middleweight division, fighters like Yoel Romero and Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza whom Robert Whittaker knocked off before getting injured himself, leaving Bisping with a clear shot at his coveted monster payday with ‘GSP.’

But Masvidal’s beef is much more simple in that he was just trying to clear up an alleged social media beef with the drunken Bisping, only to be brushed off with a ‘cowabunga’ sign.

While it’s not a fight that’s likely to happen anytime soon – especially with Bisping teasing retirement after UFC 217 – ‘The Count’ still stands high on ‘Gamebred’s’ list of hoes to slap. Or something.

For now, both men have two extremely talented challenges to focus on when the UFC returns to Madison Square Garden for their awaited pay-per-view on Nov. 4.

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Rockhold: ‘No One’ Has Avoided Every Contender Like Bisping

Nearly a year-and-a-half after Michael Bisping shockingly knocked him out in the first round of their short-notice main event at June 2015’s UFC 199, former UFC middleweight champ Luke Rockhold finally returned to the octagon when he stopped former WSOF champ David Branch in the second round of their main event at last weekend’s UFC […]

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After the win, Rockhold took an opportunity to call out Bisping for waiting over an entire year to fight returning former welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre at November 4’s UFC 217 from New York City, a fight that most believe “The Count” held out for due to the massive expected payday.

With only one title defense – and over retiring No. 14 legend Dan Henderson, no less – in his reign since defeating Rockhold, many fans have blasted the brash Brit on several occasions for his seeming unwillingness to fight the top contenders at middleweight such as Yoel Romero and Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza. The two top-ranked but aging stars were eventually knocked off by interim champ Robert Whittaker, causing an absolute mess in one of the UFC’s most talented divisions.

So Rockhold won’t pull any punches in his criticism of Bisping’s reign, offering the belief that it’s the worst in UFC history on this evening’s episode of “UFC Tonight”:

“I think it’s the worst in UFC history. No one has ever gotten that treatment, no one has avoided every top contender. He was supposed to fight Jacare, he avoided that, he was supposed to fight Yoel, he avoided that, and somehow he’s getting away from this fight with Whittaker. He found Dan Henderson, the No. 14th-ranked at the time, and now he’s going for GSP, you know? He hasn’t done anything. I fought a guy that’s four spots higher than the guy he fought, his title defense.”

Photo Credit: Jake Roth for USA TODAY Sports

As for how he would respond to Bisping’s supposed running, Rockhold said all he could do was put himself in a position to earn a title shot, and at that point, it will be up to Bisping if he’s going to accept the awaited trilogy match after Rockhold won their first bout in November 2014:

“I’m going to put myself in position. He’s going to have a choice. Either he stands and fights like a man, or he runs. And we all know what he’s doing. He’s ran from the start and it looks like he’s going to run to the finish.”

The former champion wouldn’t take it easy on St-Pierre, either, offering the assessment that his title fight with Bisping was ridiculous in that ‘GSP’ has been retired for four years and has also never fought at middleweight:

“Look in the history of the UFC – have we ever had a champion that hasn’t defended his belt in a year-and-a-half and not fought one contender? GSP is irrelevant at 185; he retired for four years, never fought a man at ’85. Take the title away and make a fight that is real, make it a stage, there’s just no point. What they’re doing right now is lost.”

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Luke Rockhold vs. David Branch Full Fight Video Highlights

After a year and three months off following a knockout loss to Michael Bisping, former UFC middleweight champion Luke Rockhold was looking to make a big statement return when he met David Branch in the main event of (Sat., September 16, 2017) UFC Fight Night 116 from the PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh, Penn. But for […]

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But for the majority of the first round, it appeared that Rockhold was still attempting to shake off the cobwebs, as former WSOF dual-weight champ Branch used a perfect pressuring gameplan to hit a lackadaisical Rockhold against the cage when he had his hands down. Rockhold’s chin held up this time, however, and the second round was a different story, as he ragdolled Branch to take the fight to his world.

Seemingly settling into his groove, Rockhold eventually mounted Branch, taking his back and raining down a brutal onslaught of shots that forced Branch to implement the scarcely-seen tap to strikes. Watch the highlights of Rockhold brutal -and much-needed – return finish right here:

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