Michael Bisping has been indicating for some time that he intendsto have one last fight in London, England before retiring, but it seems that he’s now having second thoughts about whether that’s a good idea or not.
Bisping lost the middleweight title to Georges St-Pierre back in November, and an ill-fated decision to take a short-notice fight with Kelvin Gastelum just three weeks later also back-fired when he was KO’d in the first round, so it’s understandable that the 38-year-old is now taking time to contemplate his next move.
However, with the UFC needing to firm up their plans for UFC Fight Night 127 in London on March 17th, it seems he’s going to have to hurry up and make a decision.
“There’s a fight in the works for myself, and I’ve got until the end of the day to tell the UFC whether or not I’m taking it,” Bisping stated on his ‘Believe You Me’ podcast. “There’s an offer that’s been made to me, and all fairness to the UFC, I’ve been kind of taking my time to give them an answer so I’ve got until the end of the day to give them an answer.
“I’m just debating whether or not I take the fight. For me, whether or not those people can see, I have a bad eye. I have a bad eye and my wife doesn’t want me to continue fighting, and my manager doesn’t want me to continue fighting. I see out of that eye but not as well as I used to, and I’m still a young man so it’s kind of the reason I may hang the gloves up. My wife and manager and friends and people close to me say, ‘Mike, what do you want to do that for? You’ve done it. You’ve had the belt.’ I’ve done it. I’ve done what I set out to achieve.
“I kind of want to go do one last fight in England and they’re like, ‘So what? Five years from now or a year from now, people are gonna forget about all that and you can injure yourself even more.’ but you can injure yourself in any fight, whether or not you’re at 100% health or not. So that’s what we’re up to and I don’t know.”
“There’s the payday. I’ve got some lawsuit bulls*** that’s still going on. I don’t know if you’re aware of this but lawyers are very expensive. Also, one doesn’t want to go out on my last fight, that being the lasting impression on my MMA career. Also, I kind of feel that I owe it to the U.K. fans because they were so supportive throughout my career. I always envisioned in my mind having that retirement fight in London and there it is on a plate. I just need to take it but everyone around me is telling me not to.”
“I like the fight. It’s not a case of the time or the opponent or anything like that. It’s either am I going to continue fighting or am I not? I promised my wife a long time ago that I was done fighting, promised a ton of people, but I still seem to be slogging on and doing it.”
