Daniel Cormier laughed Off Michael Bisping’s Short-Notice Replacement offer for UFC 200: ‘I was deadly serious’
As we move closer to the UFC’s next big milestone event, Michael Bisping revealed that he was 100 percent on board for a fight with Daniel Cormier at UFC 200.
Emanating from T-Mobile Arena in July 2016, UFC 200 was one of the promotion’s biggest cards of all time, but it narrowly became a complete disaster after the originally scheduled main event between Daniel Cormier and Jon Jones was scrapped three days before fight night.
‘Bones’ was pulled from the card by USADA following a potential anti-doping violation leaving the UFC desperate for a replacement.
Fresh off his iconic short-notice title win over Luke Rockhold at UFC 199, Michael Bisping immediately threw his name into the hat hoping to replace Jones and capitalize on another last-minute withdrawal.
“DC needed an opponent right and I tweeted out, I’ll do it,” Bisping said in a video on his YouTube channel. “I was the middleweight champion then and I was deadly serious and DC kind of laughed it off. ‘Ah Bisping, what’s he talking about?’, I was f*ck*ng deadly serious, I’ll step in there with you and as we know, it was Anderson Silva” (h/t MMA News).
‘The Spider’ stepped up and accepted the fight on 24 hours’ notice.
“He flew in on a day’s notice, went to a decision, got beat soundly of course there’s not even a discussion there. Nice body kick by Anderson at the end there, that was all about all he landed,” Bisping said.
We never got to see Bisping and ‘DC’ square off inside the Octagon, but we can always feast on the footage from their epic chimichanga challenge.
“100 percent I was serious,” Bisping added. “Step up, last minute, no training camp, I don’t give a sh*t. He’s gonna take me down, he might pound me out, who knows, probably choke me. It’s another training session and I’ve got nothing to lose. Like I’ll give it a do, come on, let’s go DC let’s see what you got.”
Bisping knows the chances of repeating his performance against Rockhold was unlikely but with practically zero risk, he would have accepted the offer without thinking twice.
“Listen, he’s a beast, he’s a monster and it wouldn’t have gone well for me but 100%, you get a massive payday like on UFC 200, a champ-champ fight, risk-free,” Bisping concluded.
