Michael Bisping Unsure If He’ll Fight Again Before Retiring
Despite the back-and-forth banter going on between Michael Bisping and Luke Rockhold ahead of a potential trilogy match, Bisping recently said that he’s unsure of whether or not he’ll even fight again:
“Honestly, I don’t know if I’m going to fight again,” Bisping said on his “Believe You Me” podcast. “I was going to fight in London, which is happening this weekend. I was supposed to fight but we couldn’t get the deal done and now it’s giving me more time to reflect. I don’t know, maybe I will, maybe I won’t [fight again].”
“If a deal comes my way that is good enough, and by the way, I’m not saying that as an insult to the UFC, they’ve got to run their business and I understand that and I’ve got to run mine,” he added. “If it’s mutually beneficial to all parties included, then yeah I will fight. But if not, I’m happy with the way things were.”
After losing the middleweight title to Georges St. Pierre via third-round submission at last November’s UFC 217 in New York City, the 39-year-old Bisping attempted to bounce back quickly by accepting a fight against Kelvin Gastelum in Shanghai, China just three weeks later. That fight, however, ended in a brutal first-round knockout loss for “The Count”.
Following the loss to Gastelum, Bisping said that he wanted to fight one more time before hanging up his gloves for good, but it seems as if he’s now debating it more and more:
“The reason I say I don’t know, there’s a lot of things going on in my life right now,” Bisping said. “I’m very busy and of course you’ve got to want it and I do want it. I do enjoy it and I do miss being in fight camp and I think that’s one thing that all athletes have is the trouble of finally walking away.
“I find myself whenever I speak to athletes and former athletes, I ask them about their transition because it’s something I’m curious about but for me when I was younger, fighting was just a way to make money and I’ve been somewhat successful in that department.
“But I’m always scared of letting it go and saying goodbye because once you close the door, you close the door and you can never go back.”
Would you like to see Bisping enter the Octagon one more time?
