Michael Bisping won a UFC championship with one freakin’ eye.
Today, fight fans know Bisping for his work at the commentary table, but less than a decade ago, he shocked the world with a short-notice knockout of Luke Rockhold to claim the middleweight title and etch his name in the history books as the UFC’s first-ever British champ.
What many fans didn’t know at the time was that Bisping was essentially fighting with a handicap after an injury early in his career caused him to go blind in one eye.
Michael Bisping surprised everyone at the Jaxxon Podcast by taking off his glass eye:
I knocked you out with one f#cking eye before we even start”
VIA | YT Jaxxon Podcast #UFC #MMA pic.twitter.com/xJoHQPf3Dh
— FEDZ_MMA (@Fedzmma) January 3, 2025
Michael Bisping Details the Added Stress of Trying to Pass Pre-Fight Tests
During an appearance on the JAXXON podcast with Rockhold and Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson, Bisping offered some insight into how he managed to make it through pre-fight physicals despite having monocular vision.
“I just lied my ass off in every test,” Bisping revealed. “I even had a stupid little code with me and [Jason] Parillo. I would pass the pre-fight test somehow, and then at weigh-ins, the [commission] would want to check my vision. I was always terrified because I didn’t have [my fake eyeball] then, and my eye looked terrible. It looks worse now, but back then, it was a little bit better. You could clearly see when you looked at it that it wasn’t healthy.
“I would think all they had to do was cover my left eye and ask, ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’” Bisping added. “And then I would be f*cked. So, every training camp, the fight was the easy part — I was terrified because I am spending all of this money on this camp, putting all of this effort, going to fly to wherever I needed to be, and the day before the fight I’m going to be pulled from the fight.
“The stress was so major. When I would get past weigh-ins, I would be so relieved because I could fight — the stress was insane.”
Michael Bisping on how he passed eye tests with the commission pic.twitter.com/lKWOvY6Dr1
— Dovy🔌 (@DovySimuMMA) January 3, 2025
Bisping retired from mixed martial arts in 2017 having gone 30-9 in his career. Along the way, he earned notable wins against Cung Le, Anderson Silva, and Dan Henderson. He also shared the Octagon with UFC legends like Wanderlei Silva, Vitor Belfort, Chael Sonnen, and Georges St-Pierre.
Watch the full podcast episode below:
