When it comes to achievements inside the Octagon, few can match the decorated legacy of Michael Bisping. A UFC Hall of Famer, Bisping enjoyed a reign with the company’s middleweight title between June 2016 and November 2017.
However, the legacy of ‘The Count’ can’t be measured by championships alone. To date, no man in UFC history has won more fights in the promotion’s middleweight division than the 16 that Bisping managed. The Ultimate Fighter season three winner was instrumental in helping grow the sport of MMA in the United Kingdom and fittingly became the first-ever UFC champion from the country when he defeated Luke Rockhold at UFC 199 to win the 185 lb crown.
For all of his accolades, the most remarkable thing about Bisping’s career is the fact that he fought the last 9 fights of his career with, essentially, just one eye. Ironically, the latter stages of his time inside the Octagon would be when he enjoyed the most success.
Michael Bisping Suffered an Injury to his Right Eye in a Fight With Vitor Belfort
‘The Count’ lost the bout by TKO
Although he eventually got his hands on UFC gold, for the longest time it seemed as though Bisping would be the ‘nearly man’ of the middleweight division. The polarising Brit often made it to number one contender showdowns, before being denied a shot at the title at the last hurdle. Most felt he was desperately unlikely to lose a decision to Chael Sonnen in January 2012, in a fight where the winner would earn the right to challenge then-middleweight champion, Anderson Silva.
After recovering from that setback with a win over Brian Stann, Bisping would find himself in a title eliminator once again. This time, ‘The Count’ travelled to Brazil to take on home favourite Vitor Belfort – and the ending of the fight would have career-altering consequences.
The head kick that caused Bisping to lose the bout would cause a retinal detachment in his right eye that ultimately cost him his vision in that eye. Not that the fighter himself realised it at the time. Recalling the first time he began to notice the symptoms of his injury in his autobiography, Quitters Never Win, Bisping recalled:
“The eye didn’t look that bad [after the Belfort fight]. The first thing I noticed was my fingers turning invisible in restaurants. The first time it [his vision problem] happened, I was reaching for my drink and my hand became a stump.”
Initially, Bisping refused to tell doctors about his issues, for fear that it would cost him his UFC career. As he explained to MMA Junkie: “I was just about able to scrape past the medicals. It was definitely touch and go. I was always terrified of doing a full training camp, then being turned away by the commission doctor.” As part of that same conversation, he admitted that he was fighting while ‘legally blind’ as a result of his injuries.
“To pass the medical test, you’ve got to have 20-200 vision, which is classed as clinically blind anyway, so it’s not very good – it’s not a very hard mark to pass. Some days I could, some days I couldn’t. But fortunately, I was just able to scrape by.
“People always say: ‘How did you fight with only one eye?’ And I always say: ‘With great (expletive) difficulty!'”
Detailing exactly how he got around the fact that he was dealing with only 50% of his previous vision inside the cage, Bisping conceded: “It wasn’t easy. I had to change my style altogether. Depth perception was very hard. I’d often go to grab things, and I’d miss them, and at my second or third attempt, I’d get it.
“I used to use my jab a lot, but I stopped using it because I’d be jabbing fresh air. I had to make physical contact, because once I’d made contact, the brain’s a magnificent thing, then I could gauge the distances a little better.”
Bisping Refused to Listen to Doctors Who Told Him to Retire
Naturally, Bisping was advised to retire by medics as soon as the injury was discovered but, as he could still pass the minimum sight requirements to compete, the Brit chose to fight on. Having taken just under a year away from the Octagon to attempt to rectify the issue, he returned to action (with a prosthetic eye) in April 2014, losing a wide decision to American Tim Kennedy.
At that point, you would have got long odds on Bisping ever again being part of the UFC title picture. To his credit, though, he bounced back with a victory over Cung Le a little over four months later. A submission loss to fierce rival Luke Rockhold came before the end of the year, but ‘The Count’ would soon put those woes behind him.
Michael Bisping’s professional MMA career | ||
|---|---|---|
39 fights | 30 wins | 9 losses |
By KO | 18 | 3 |
By submission | 2 | 2 |
By decision | 10 | 4 |
Wins over C.B Dollaway and Thales Leites followed in 2015 and that short winning streak was enough to bag Bisping a fight on home soil against now-former middleweight champion, Anderson Silva, in London. The hometown favourite produced a herculean performance to upset the Brazilian on the scorecards and sent the 02 Arena absolutely wild.
Few would have blamed Bisping if he’d wanted to end his career on that note. However, there was one more chapter to be written in his fairytale story – and it came in the form of a short-notice middleweight title opportunity against Rockhold.
The Brit would have been a massive underdog in any case, but the fact that he took the bout on just 17 days’ notice meant that he was given virtually no chance of taking the crown. Bisping ripped up the script to take the belt at 3:36 of the very first round after knocking Rockhold out cold.
It was one of the greatest upsets in UFC history and all the more remarkable given that he pulled it off with just one eye. Bisping would make a successful defence of the gold against Dan Henderson at UFC 204 in Manchester, before losing to Georges St-Pierre the following year.
Bisping would retire from active competition after being knocked out by Kelvin Gastelum in his next fight. He later told Joe Rogan that the decision was heavily influenced by issues he was having with the vision in his healthier left eye.
“I started having issues with my good eye as well after the Gastelum fight. I was like, this isn’t worth it. The reason I retired was the Gastelum fight.”
Although he’s now been retired for the better part of seven years, Bisping has been no stranger to UFC telecasts, frequently working as a commentator and handling post-fight interviews. He also hosts his own podcast, entitled ‘Believe You Me’.
He might be best known for inspiring a generation of budding MMA fighters in the UK, but Bisping has also been cited as an inspiration to those with vision issues, including undefeated UFC middleweight contender Shara ‘Bullet’ Magomedov, who himself fights with only one eye.