So he says.
During a press conference earlier this month, Michael Bisping showed he was wearing a prosthetic eye on top of his real right eye. Turns out he had been wearing this prosthetic eye for some time to hide the fact that his real eye was really (visibly) messed up (from a fighting-caused detached retina). He got the prosthetic to fool the fight commission doctors, and it worked (and you thought Benson Henderson's hiding a toothpick in his mouth when he fights was outrageous!). Bisping fought his final 11 or 12 fights in the UFC with essentially a non-functioning right eye (he never uses the word "blind").
I've never liked the sonofabitch, even though I could tell -- even with my limited MMA knowledge -- that his MMA skill sets were growing with every fight he took in the UFC. Unlike some fighters whose entire careers in the UFC I've watched (Urijah Faber), he learned from every fight, and was better the next time (up to a point). He was a true journeyman.
And I was pissed that he won the belt from Luke Rockhold because it was a lucky punch in a fight Bisping should never have got in the first place. It was supposed to have been Rockhold-Weidman II but Weidman got hurt just a week before the fight, and Dana White called Bisping. Not because he was next in line but entirely because he never turned down a fight, no matter how short the notice. He was in Canada on a movie set when the call from Dana came.
Rockhold was on a tear having finished his last six straight opponents, including a 2nd-round submission over Bisping. In my humble but unerringly accurate opinion, Bisping wasn't "challenger" material, not then or ever. But that's MMA, innit? When the bell rings, history don't mean jack. Protect yourself at all times and may the best man win.
Bisping's one and only successful title defense was a decision over a 46-year-old Dan Henderson. In five rounds he couldn't manage to put away a fighter nine years his senior. And in his next fight he got schooled by Georges St-Pierre, who hadn't been inside the cage in four years. Georges put on a master class and Bisping looked to be the one with "ring rust."
And I was pissed again when they put Bisping in the UFC Hall of Fame, because absent the lucky punch in the fight he never should have got, he had nothing in particular to recommend him as a hall of famer. Except that he never turned down a fight, even on short notice.
And because he's a Hall of Famer the UFC decided he also was qualified to be on of their commentators, and again in my humble but (still) unerringly accurate opinion, he sucks as a commentator. Not Daniel Cormier suckage, or Joe Goldberg suckage, but it's a suckage all the same. If he's commentating on the fight I usually watch it on a pirated Internet feed with Russian announcers. That way I can still hear the blows but I don't have to listen to Bisping run his mouth.
And last week he got a total knee replacement. Which means he also was fighting his last several fights on a bum knee. One good eye and one good leg.
I don't like looking at him, or listening to him, but my hat's off to him. He's a tough bastard, and he's got guts.
