Michael Bisping Rips Chris Weidman For Trying To Manipulate Rules At UFC 210
UFC 210 this past Saturday was a relative disaster for the NYSAC with Daniel Cormier possibly gaming the system to make weight for his title defense against Anthony Johnson as well as Pearl Gonzalez being removed from her bout for about 10 minutes. The biggest mishap happened the co-main event fight between Gegard Mousasi and Chris Weidman. As seen in the second round of the fight, Mousasi landed a pair of legal knees on Weidman which Dan Miragliotta said were illegal. Miragliotta then changed his mind after John McCarthy viewed the replay, resulting in Miragliotta attempting to restart the fight only to have the ringside physicians stop the bout, giving Mousasi an extremely controversial TKO win. This was a hot topic coming out of this event and UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping let everyone know his thoughts about it during Monday’s edition of his podcast, Believe You Me. Bisping blamed the entire snafu on Weidman, saying that the former middleweight champion was trying to game the system.
“The real talking point isn’t whether or not they were sloppy and how s**t Mousasi’s takedown defense was and, yet again, how sloppy Chris’s striking is. The controversy and the talking point is the end of the fight”, Bisping said (transcript courtesy of MMA Fighting). “Weidman went in for yet another telegraphed takedown attempt, Mousasi kind of sprawled, kind of had him in a headlock position and from here, Chris tried to manipulate the rules. . . If a person has one hand on the floor, in the past that was a downed opponent. What people used to do was, they used to touch the floor with that hand and then they couldn’t be kneed in the face, when realistically, they didn’t need to put that hand on the floor, they were totally manipulating the rules so they couldn’t be kneed.
“At a weigh in, you try to make weight any way you can. At a fight, you’re supposed to be a man and f**king fight, not manipulate the rules and put one hand on the ground or two hands on the ground. Be a man, stand up, fight, go out there, tooth and nail, bite down on your mouthpiece and lets f**king do this.”
If you thought Bisping would stop there, then you would be wrong as the champion went on to say that not only was Weidman “playing the game” he was also hamming up his injury to try and earn the disqualification win.
“Chris Weidman has only got himself to blame for that fight being finished. . . It appeared, initially, that it was two illegal strikes. So Weidman thought he had five minutes. But come on man, talk about an Oscar winning performance. He was laying it on thick. He thought he had five minutes, but he was rolling around on the floor, clutching his head, [saying] ‘Uhhhhhh.’ He was putting on a real performance here. He even rolled back from being on his knees on his backside. Because he was acting so hurt and so injured, the commission said no, you’re not continuing to fight so they called it a TKO. I don’t know if that was the right decision, but Weidman was trying to win via a disqualification or, at the very most, trying to get a point deducted from Mousasi.”
Bisping brought up his fight with Anderson Silva and how Silva landed a jumping knee at the end of the third round that seriously hurt him. This led to Silva jumping on top of the cage to celebrate, but he was then informed that the fight had not been stopped. Bisping went on to recover from the knockdown and win a unanimous decision. According to Bisping, Weidman handled the situation on Saturday, saying that the former champion was being “a little b**ch.”
“At the end of the day, when those knees were delivered – and they were legal knees, we know that with the benefit of slo-mo replay – Weidman put on a performance. He rolled around on the floor. He clutched his head like a six year old that bangs his head and wants a Band-Aid from his mommy! He was holding his head like a little kid! ‘Uhhh, mommy, mommy, I’ve hurt my head.’ And then he tumbles back onto his backside, and he’s rolling around on the floor looking so sorry for himself. I fought Anderson Silva, at the end of the third round my mouthpiece came out, he dives up in the air, knees me in the face, opens stitches all over my face – I needed about 20 stitches in my face – I’m on the floor, as he kneed me, the buzzer went. Did I roll around on the floor going ‘mummy, mummy, please help.’ No! I got up, wiped the blood off my face, stuck my mouthpiece in, took a breath, had a sip of water, then went back out and fought. I didn’t roll around like a little b**ch on the floor hoping that the commission would give me a win by default. That’s what he did!
“Just like Daniel Cormier tried to manipulate his weight with that towel, Chris Weidman tried to manipulate the outcome of that fight due to that legal knee. “
