Michael Bisping probably should have pulled out of his middleweight championship bout with Georges St-Pierre at UFC 217.
According to Bisping, ‘The Count’ suffered a serious injury just one week before UFC 217, when training partner Dean Amasinger charged at Bisping with a double leg take down and left him with a torn cartilage in his ribs.
Bisping, who ended up losing the title to St-Pierre, revealed the details of his injury on the latest episode of True Geordie podcast.
“I actually tore the cartilage in my ribs the week before the fight,” Bisping said, per MMA Weekly’s Damon Martin. “It was the final training session, we shouldn’t have done this sparring session, this sounds like an excuse. I didn’t talk about it at the time because it sounds like you’re making excuses but the reality was on the Friday before we flew to New York, Dean [Ammasinger] was out there, he was helping me a little bit and he shot in for a double leg takedown like his life depended on it. Ran me across the Octagon, I went down and he landed on top of my ribs.
“Generally that would be fine, but as soon as I went down, I felt something rip so I couldn’t move, I couldn’t rotate, I couldn’t do anything.”
The 39-year-old UFC veteran held his own against ‘Rush’ before being dropped with an overhand left and finished with a brutal rear-naked choke in the third round.
Bisping, the light heavyweight tournament winner of The Ultimate Fighter 3, said he couldn’t pull out of the fight because there was just too much on the line.
“I got to New York and I was having treatment on it everyday, it was an absolute nightmare,” he said. “So people said to me ‘you looked a little stiff in there, Michael’. Yeah, I was stiff for a very good reason. I tore the cartilage in my ribs but it was a big fight, a lot of money on the line, and as a fighter you still think you can do it.”
The Brit went on the credit GSP for the win.
“It wasn’t my best performance, it didn’t go my way, but not taking anything away from Georges. God bless him, good for him, he got the job done.”
Bisping, a UFC veteran of almost twelve years, accepted a short-notice fight against Kelvin Gastelum just three weeks after losing the title to St-Pierre and was knocked out in the opening three minutes of the first round.
It’s expected that Bisping’s next fight will be his last, although the British fan favorite hasn’t decided on an opponent.
Get the latest gear
