It’s on. It’s off. It’s on. It’s off. It’s on.
Just when it looked like the nail was in the Michael Bisping vs. Georges St-Pierre coffin, new life has been breathed into the fight.
Let’s look at the series of events up to now.
- UFC President Dana White announces that welterweight great St-Pierre will return for a middleweight title shot against Bisping.
- Bisping threatens to take title shot away from St-Pierre if he continues to insist upon a date later in the year.
- St-Pierre says “I can fight you any time after October.”
- Fight is off.
White went on record to claim that Bisping vs. St-Pierre would no longer be taking place as the Canadian’s timeline would not work for the UFC.
Rightful number one contender Yoel Romero would get the next shot at ‘The Count’, according to White.
Hang on a sec https://t.co/0uYL9rOKVP
— FootballJOE (@FootballJOE) May 17, 2017
But Bisping has just thrown the cat among the pigeons by insisting that “It’s news to me.”
The Manchester-born 185lber has maintained that he will, in fact, hold out for the St-Pierre payday/fight by revealing that an injury would keep him out until later this year anyway.
“I will say this and I’ve said it before, it’s a blessing in disguise cause I can’t fight any time soon,” Bisping said on his podcast Believe You Me.
“I can’t exercise at all at the moment. I can’t train. My knee is giving me many, many problems. It was doing it in Thailand, it’s still getting no better.
“I haven’t trained since I’ve been in London cause I’ve been busy most days. I’ve flirted with some weights in the hotel gym, which is not very good shall we say. I haven’t trained and it just isn’t getting better. The back of my knee is incredibly tight. I can’t actually straighten my left leg.
“I think that’s because all the tendons and ligaments and muscles are super tight and that’s why I can’t straighten it. My surgeon said we had to work on stretching that but it just kind of got extenuated if you will and it’s super tight.
“I can’t even walk for like five minutes so I need to get back and start getting some treatment on that.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jSDEos56zM
The vast majority of fight fans were not happy about the booking of Bisping vs. St-Pierre as they felt that ‘Rush’ was leapfrogging Romero just due to his superstar name.
Well the bad news for those who rejoiced when White announced that Bisping would indeed be taking on the Cuban after all is that Bisping is still intending on handing St-Pierre the title shot in what would be the most lucrative fight of the Brit’s career to date.
“To clarify, no official word from the UFC. I haven’t heard anything,” Bisping added. “Georges is still hoping for it. I’m still hoping for it.
“I’ll say this, I was offered the fight twice. I was offered the fight in October and it never materialised. I was offered the fight in January or February and it did materialise and we had a press conference and we shook hands and we stood there in Las Vegas and we talked a bit of shit.
“So OK, I haven’t had a bout agreement, but that is the plan. That was the offer and I accepted. I kind of feel once a deal is made we should stick to it, that’s how I feel.”
