Michael Bisping Reveals Proposed Date For GSP Fight

Michael Bisping has an idea of when he and Georges St-Pierre will fight.

The UFC middleweight champion took to his his podcast “Believe You Me” to reveal that UFC President Dana White is pushing for the blockbuster title fight to go down in the midst of International Fight week on July 8th (quotes via FOX Sports):

“It’s looking like July 8,” Bisping said. “Dana’s pushing for July 8. He told me July 8. July 8 would be a good date for me as well. I could fight two months from now. July 8, that works.”

Bisping’s last Octagon appearance was a successful unanimous decision title defense against longtime rival Dan Henderson in October. He suffered a a knee injury which forced him to undergo surgery and has him out-of-action until approximately May.

”The Count’ plans to hold two separate camps in preparation for St-Pierre if the July 8th date gets locked down, and will focus on his wrestling and jiu-jitsu game heavily in one of them:

“In fact, July 8 is great for me because that’s give or take four months away. What I’m going to do, my preparation for that, I’m going to give myself two camps,” Bisping said. “One camp where since my last fight my knee was giving me a lot of trouble so I haven’t actually done much training since October.

“I’ve lifted weights and things like that but I really haven’t done jiu-jitsu or anything like that. So these next two months, I’ll brush up on my jiu-jitsu and try to improve that game. I’ll brush up on my wrestling and improve that side. I will lift a lot of weights and focus on strength and conditioning and explosive power. I will also focus on my diet extremely.”

The 185-pound champ will pace himself ahead of his bout with the former Canadian welterweight champ, putting extreme emphases on his work output and diet in the first few months before the fight. He then plans on ramping up the work-load six weeks out from fight night in order to make his weight cut a bit easier:

“The plan is in two months time but still only training at a very mild pace. You know maybe once a day, maybe twice on the days where I’m lifting weights, but still, the tempo very low, controlled, eating a good diet, looking after my body. Then six weeks out from the fight, I plan on being 200 pounds. Then I’ll start my proper fight training and my weight will already be low enough to where I already cut weight. Therefore I can eat throughout my training camp and stay strong.”