Michael Bisping had two very different kinds of concern coming out of UFC Seattle, but both pointed to the same thing. He looked at Israel Adesanya’s refusal to retire after the Joe Pyfer loss and saw a fighter who might need saving from himself. Then he watched Alexa Grasso flatten Maycee Barber and admitted the scene on the canvas scared the hell out of him.
On the Adesanya side, Bisping did not dance around it.
He said, “I wish, in a way, that Israel would have retired on Saturday night.”
He then laid out exactly how he would have liked that moment to go, saying:
“And say, ‘You know what? I did it, I achieved my goals, I got here, I was a champion in kickboxing, I came over to mixed martial arts, I was able to beat all these fighters, I was able to stop takedowns, I was able to become champion, a dominant champion, I’ve made money, I’ve built a brand for myself, I’ve opened up the doors for a great post-fight career, thank you for everything.’ And then put the gloves down in the octagon. But he didn’t say that.”
Adesanya already made it clear he is not done, even after a fourth straight loss. Bisping was not calling him cowardly or washed. If anything, he framed it as the exact opposite.
“He said he’s coming back again and again and again. And you know what? Fair play to the guy. He is taking damage. That’s a fact. He got knocked out against Imavov, he took some heavy shots against Joe Pyfer, and back in the day, that wouldn’t have happened.”
That is where Bisping’s real concern kicked in.
“Because he’s getting older, and he’s slowing down, but of course sometimes, as fighters, we need protecting from ourselves. I’m not saying I disagree with Israel Adesanya for not retiring. I would have liked to see it because I think he’s given this sport enough.”
With Adesanya already pushing back publicly after the Pyfer defeat, Bisping’s take drops right into the same debate sparked by the result and by the reaction to Joe Pyfer’s win and Adesanya’s latest slide.
Bisping also reached for a comparison nobody wants attached to the end of their career.
“What is he going to do? Is he going to continue fighting the best guys and losing again and again?” he said. “And I tell you what: When you’ve lost that many, it does take balls to keep getting back in there – to keep chasing that thrill, to keep trying to get that victory, to keep trying to prove to yourself more than anyone else that you’ve still got it. But there are parallels between Israel Adesanya and what happened with Anderson Silva, as well.”
Bisping’s reaction to Maycee Barber’s finish was even more frightening
If the Adesanya comments were uneasy, Bisping’s reaction to Barber’s loss was pure alarm. Watching Grasso blast Barber with the right hand and jump on the choke, he thought he was looking at something much worse than a normal stoppage.
Bisping said, “Right hand spins Maycee Barber, drops down to one knee, locks that up, and then that for several minutes. And the eyes weren’t moving. I’m like, ‘Whoa, shut up, shut up. Oh my God. Oh my God. She looks dead. She’s not moving.’”
Plenty of viewers had the same fear in real time when Barber stayed motionless on the canvas after the finish.
Bisping broke down the moment on his show below.
He kept going with the part that made the whole thing feel even heavier.
“It was only after, like, I don’t know a minute or even longer that the eyes started to move a little bit and I was like, ‘She’ll be OK. She’ll be OK,’” Bisping said. “But holy sh*t, man, that was scary.”
Paul Felder broke the sequence down from the referee’s side and explained why Mike Beltran had to jump in immediately.
“It was weird, too, because she gets hit, she’s obviously out,” Felder said. “She has no idea what’s going on when she gets put in the choke, so she’s not going to tap. She wasn’t there when the choke started and Beltran did a great job. He didn’t wait for a tap, he wasn’t waiting to see anything, as soon as Grasso put that choke in, he was already running over and stopping it.”
Felder also described the strange in-between state Barber seemed to hit while the sequence was ending.
“What was crazy is you see her instinct still there a little bit. She kind of comes to, starts wrestling, but then you see her kind of almost fade back out. … It was strange and then was breathing really deeply and laying there.”
He then tied it to the previous medical concern around Barber, saying:
“And she’s had some medical things. She had the seizure incident before that fight in the [UFC Vegas 107] main event and never walked [out]. Then I started getting worried, is that what she’s having right now? Did that kind of trigger something in her? She says she’s fine now, she posted on social media, but still, one of the scariest finishes in a long time.”
Barber later addressed the aftermath herself and said:
“I don’t really remember a whole lot. All I know is every time I go on social media I look like I’m dead and that’s not a very fun thing to see.”
That at least gave fans something reassuring after a finish that already pushed a lot of concern into overdrive and fed the reaction around Barber’s first statement and Alexa Grasso’s brutal win.
Bisping still made sure Grasso got her shine too.
“Fair play to Alexa Grasso,” he said. “She’s dangerous. The last fight, I think it was Natalia Silva, I thought maybe she had her moment in the sun and now it’s kind of fading because Natalia Silva had a really, really good performance against her. But Grasso said she was injured beforehand and this is what I’m capable of when I’m 100 percent, and I’ve got to say that certainly seems like it’s the case… And Maycee Barber has been in there and gone to a decision with her before, and Maycee Barber, yeah she’s had some issues along the way, but she’s had some great fights. Great fights.”
That left UFC Seattle with two ugly conversations hanging in the air. One was whether Adesanya is still chasing something that is already behind him. The other was the kind of finish that makes everybody stop talking about rankings for a second and just hope the fighter on the mat is okay.
