Michael Bisping had a magnificent opportunity to cement his legacy amongst the greats. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a nightmare, as Georges St-Pierre made a spectacular UFC return at UFC 217 after four years of hiatus to beat Bisping via rear-naked choke to claim the middleweight championship on November 4.
Just three weeks off that loss, Bisping shocked his MMA fans and accepted short notice fight against Kelvin Gastelum, which he lost via first-round knockout in China. Shortly after, Englishman announced that his next fight is going to be his retirement fight.
Ever since Bisping stated he is going to make one last trip to Octagon before he hangs his gloves for good, he has turned down multiple offers to fight that came his way but there is another addition to that list is Stockton’s finest, Nick Diaz.
Diaz hasn’t fought inside of the Octagon since 2015 and recently coming off of a year-long suspension and promotion’s boss Dana White thinks he will fight again. Bisping responds to rumors of Nick Diaz fight while speaking on his podcast Believe You Me: (Quotes via BloodyElbow)
“No, no. I’m not fighting Nick Diaz, it’s all total bullsh-t. I haven’t spoken to the UFC about anything, they haven’t even come to me. In fact, I’m a little bit offended the Ultimate Fighting Championship – what the f—k?”
Bisping opens up on an interesting fact, that before the GSP fight, ‘The Count’ said he was doing some PR stuff for UFC in New York- and went to a club with friends, and none other than Nick Diaz was also present there.
“Great guy, we hung out, we had some drinks, we had a good time and he suggested that we should fight each other at 170. And I’m like ‘I can’t do 170, so we were talking about a catchweight and I said ‘Nick, I’d love to, man. You’ve got a huge name in this sport,’ you know? It was a very pleasant conversation. There was no nastiness, you know what I mean? There was no bitching. I was like ‘come on dude, you have to come up, making 185 kills me’ and this and that.”
“But really I think we were just having fun with it more than anything. It never materialized into any actual real discussion of a fight, and of course since then he got banned or suspended – that whole thing with the weed which was ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous. Fortunately, the commission did the right thing and he’s back. But I don’t know were these rumors started, I don’t know who started it but it’s bullshit. I haven’t heard a single thing. The UFC haven’t reached out, my management haven’t reached out – no one has said anything, no word what so ever.”
Let’s say if a showdown with Nick Diaz doesn’t come to fruition, perhaps an old rival may suit him for a retirement fight and settle the score.
