It’s Time To Start Paying Serious Attention To Michael Bisping

A winner of seven of his last ten fights.  A three-time Fight Of The Night winner.  And possibly the next contender to Anderson Silva’s Middleweight Championship, Michael Bisping has never looked better in the Octagon.  Could fans be overlooking Bisping as a threat?

Before getting to the meat and potatoes of the article, one point needs to be stressed.  Many MMA fans hate Michael “The Count” Bisping.  There are more fans who hate Bisping than there are that love him.  Don’t believe?  Just listen to the audience in most arenas when the Brit makes his entrance or earns a decision victory.  Michael Bisping gets more natural heat from an audience than most professional wrestlers do, and professional wrestlers are taught to work for their reactions.  But Bisping has this natural way of rubbing some pundits the wrong way.  And its understood.  But it is getting to the point now where even his most passionate detractors are running out of reasons to deny him a shot at “The Spider””

For one, “The Count” is an excellent standup fighter.  The true mark of an excellent standup fighter is the ability to recover from past mistakes, and most readers probably remember Bisping sprawled out on the canvas as the result of Dan Henderson’s dreaded H-Bomb.  That H-Bomb was allowed to happen because Bisping circled the wrong way and got drilled by the overhand.  This mistake hasn’t happened again since, and aside from the Henderson loss and arguably the Chael Sonnen loss, there has yet to be an opponent to decisively defeat Bisping in both the cage and the record books.  Both the loss to Rashad Evans early in his UFC tenure at 205 pounds, his loss to Wanderlei Silva at UFC 110, and even his loss to Sonnen were all razor-thin and could have gone either way.  There has yet to be a fighter since the Henderson loss to completely outclass Michael Bisping,

Many fans are quick to point to the Matt Hamill win as a miscarriage of justice, and to a degree, that’s true, but don’t blame the fighter for the actions of the judges.  The fighter has nothing to do besides fight the best fight possible, and one can equally blame Hamill for allowing the fight to get to the judges in the first place.

But possibly the most dangerous part about Bisping that may make him a true threat to Silva is the fact that he just seems to keep evolving.  Every time he fights, his footwork is a little quicker, his jab is just a little sharper, and his kick placement is only improving.  His wrestling defense has always been good, but his wrestling offense has improved by leaps and bounds.  Hate him if you want to, but there really is no denying that Bisping just keeps getting better and better, and with a win over Vitor Belfort at UFC on FX 7on January 19th of the new year, fans and detractors alike may get to see just how good Bisping really is.

Photo Credit: Michael Bisping’s Official Website: http://www.bisping.tv/