Quitters Never Win

by Michael Bisping

  Apparently not content with his Octagonside seat, this business partner wanted to displace one of the three people officially allowed in my corner and get himself even closer to the action. At his own invitation, he would be backstage in my dressing room, walk out to the Octagon with me (which, I suspected, was the whole appeal), stand on the Octagon apron during my fight and even enter the Octagon between rounds and after the fight.

  The advice a fighter receives in the 60-second breaks between rounds can be vital. Even mundane tasks like handing over water bottles and rinsing out a mouthpiece takes on mission-critical importance in the few spare seconds between a fighter sitting and rising back up from his stool.

  ‘Yeah, sorry,’ I told my manager, ‘but he’s not a trainer. He’s not a fighter. He can’t give me any advice on any facet of the sport if things aren’t going my way. The answer is no, sorry.’

  ‘I insist …’ he said slowly.

  ‘You don’t get to insist on this.’ I stood my ground. ‘Sorry, it’s my corner.’

  ‘Who do you think you are?’ he said, with an edge I’d not heard in his voice before.

  I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard.

  ‘I’m pretty sure I’m the guy who’ll be getting punched, kicked, kneed and elbowed in there.’

  ‘He’s going to be very upset …’

  ‘Listen, I’m not trying to upset anyone,’ I explained, trying to keep an even tone. ‘But every fight is the biggest fight of my career at this point. He’s got no business trying to force his way into my fight-night team.’

  There was a silence.

  Then: ‘We’ll have a fucking conversation about this after the fight,’ and he ended the call.

  That was the last I heard from my management/camp until fight day. Every other fighter in that Docklands hotel had a full team around them all week, helping them cut weight, liaising with the UFC over their promotional schedule and basically providing support.

  My support consisted of Kazeka Muniz, my moody companion from the lonely Christmas of 2006, who’d been sent to float around and, no doubt, report back my every word and movement to Liverpool. And I had my friend from Clitheroe – Jacko – for company. For keeping sharp, I had the heavy bag in the hotel workout room and the pavement outside.

  After making weight, Jacko and me went out for the post-weigh-in meal with Midlands fighter Paul Taylor and his team.

  Finally, on fight day, and after I’d paid for his petrol, Tony appeared with an hour to go before I left for the O2 Arena.

  In a quiet word away from the others, Tony informed me the gym owners ‘had been going ballistic all week’ about my perceived snub. He wouldn’t elaborate further.

  Even though we’d both won in Montreal, I didn’t meet Jason Day until we found ourselves in the UFC office at the same time on the Tuesday before our fight. I stood up from signing posters for the UFC and shook my opponent’s hand.

  Fucking hell! I thought. He’s considerably bigger than me. What happened to dropping down to middleweight and fighting smaller guys?

  That was the first time I realised that I’d still be fighting bigger guys, even at 185lb. It was kinda shocking.

  The Jason Day fight itself couldn’t have gone any better. The form that I showed day in, day out in the gym was – for one of the few times in my career – on full display in the Octagon.

  The 15,327 British fans gave me a thunderous reception when I walked out. The support from them was unwavering and gave me an extra boost to put on what Joe Rogan told the viewers was my best UFC performance so far: a 3-minute, 42-second TKO via two well-placed takedowns and relentless ground and pound.

  ‘Huge, huge performance by Michael Bisping,’ Rogan said. ‘Bisping was all over Jason Day, landing big punches early on, taking side control and dropping bombs, elbows and everything. Michael Bisping just overwhelmed Day. Out of all the performances in the UFC, that was his most impressive to date.’

  In my post-fight interview with Joe in the Octagon, I began by thanking the British fans. ‘The support I get from you guys – I could cry. I do not take it for granted. Every one of you – thank you from the bottom of my heart.

  ‘Regarding my performance, I’ve said that I’ve not performed to the best of my ability in the UFC. I think I’ve started to do that. Yeah, I’m happy.’

  ‘You’ve just served a big notice to the middleweight division,’ said Joe, wrapping things up.

  There were a lot of people on the dais at the UFC 85 post-fight press conference. Besides me, Thiago Alves was there to talk about his main-event win over Matt Hughes, Hughes was there to take the loss like a man, Mick Swick was asked for words regarding his points win over fellow welterweight Marcus Davis, Thales Leites and Nate Marquardt argued about their split decision and UFC newcomer Kevin Burns was given time to talk the press through his Submission of the Night win.

  With so many fighters fielding questions, there were long minutes while I was just sat there listening. So I took a sneaky look at my phone, which had been vibrating like a sex toy convention with incoming texts.

  I wished I hadn’t checked. I’d been sent a series of text messages from my manager. The texts were abusive. I sat there, in front of thirty reporters and five cameras which were live-streaming to hundreds of thousands of fans around the world, and stared at what was written on the screen.

  Then I was asked a question by one of the reporters.

  I turned the phone off and put it in my jacket pocket.

  Ninety minutes later the coach, loaded to capacity with bruised and bloodied fighters and sports bags overstuffed with gloves and target pads, pulled up outside the Ibis hotel in the Docklands area of London. It was just before 1am, three hours after Alves’s flying knee had brought UFC 85 to an official close. The UFC 85 host hotel bar was already five-deep.

  It was time to jog upstairs for a quick shower and fresh clothes and then me and Rebecca – who I met up with backstage – were going to see about a drink and a bite to eat.

  Paul Kelly was in the hotel lobby; when he saw me waiting for the elevator, he came over and confirmed that our mutual ‘friends’ from Liverpool were on the warpath. I told him about the texts I’d gotten while I was at the press conference. It was then that Paul clued me in about the type of people who we’d involved ourselves with.

  When I got to my room, the landline was already ringing. Rebecca answered the phone and told me it was the business partner of the Liverpool gym. The same one I’d refused to allow work my corner.

  I said hello.

  ‘Can I speak to the superstar, please?’ He repeated this three times in a ridiculously high-pitched voice before launching into a screaming rant.

  I’d have loved to have ended my association with them and there. But that wasn’t an option at that time.

  So, while I couldn’t bring myself to give the apology they demanded, I made peace by saying that, after thinking about it, maybe I’d not considered their request like I could have done and, fair enough, maybe I had a bad attitude about it. It was, probably, y’know, due to the stress of the fight. That kinda stuff.

  Nothing was the same again, no matter how it appeared when cameras were rolling in the gym. Tony Quigley left the team for his own reasons around this time, leaving me feeling even more isolated. My mate Jacko was studying film production, and I hired him as my social media manager to keep me company as much as his skills as content creator.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I’M GOING TO BE A CONTENDER

  It was more of an emotional fear than something I thought was a genuine possibility, but I’d sometime worry that any career that had skyrocketed as quickly as mine could crash just as fast. In interviews I did at the time, I found myself bringing up how I used to wander from job to job and add comments like ‘I’ve left all that behind me for now,’ or ‘I’ve shown my family a better life and it’s up to me to make sure that continues.’

  It always terrified me, the idea of going back to living pay ch
eque to pay cheque. To be constantly overdrawn, unable to buy the kids new clothes – the thought of finding myself back in that situation fuelled me in training. There wasn’t anything in particular I was worried that could happen, it wasn’t like I was dealing with a career-threatening injury (that would come later), or that I’d lost two fights in a row and feared getting cut from the UFC roster. It was the indistinct dread any decent family man feels when he finds himself with something to lose.

  This fear helped push me in training all the way to having a resting heart rate of 36 beats a minute.

  My next fight was scheduled for 18 October 2008. Having expressed sufficient contrition for not previously giving a fuck, Leben was cleared to leave the US and our fight was rebooked as the main event of UFC 89. Headlining a UFC card in the United States had been a huge feather in my cap – but topping the bill in my own country was very special.

  The assignment at Birmingham’s National Indoor Arena came with extra expectations, of course. As one half of the headline attraction, the box office of the event would be a reflection on me and my fight. I’d benefited from being on cards headlined by Rampage, Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz, and wanted to play it forward to fighters up and down the UFC 89 card, including Paul Kelly and my old Nottingham training partner Dan Hardy, who was making his own UFC debut.

  Plus, this was around the time the UFC had – finally – exhausted every macho-sounding subtitle in the English language: UFC 42: Sudden Impact, UFC 48: Payback, UFC 55: Fury etc. To be honest, for some of the historical UFC events, the marketing people seemed to have gone down to the local Blockbuster Video store and picked titles to copy at random. I mean, UFC 19: Young Guns was bad enough, but who the hell thought UFC 26: Field of Dreams was the one to go with?

  And so UFC 89 would be marketed as simply Bisping vs Leben. And of course, I wanted an event with my family’s surname in the title to be a success.

  ‘Tickets are going great, almost sold out,’ Marshall assured me during one of the PR days the UFC arranged with me.

  He felt horrible about it afterwards, but Marshall added to the pressure when he confirmed rumours the next season of The Ultimate Fighter could be based around a Team UK vs Team USA concept. Dan Henderson and Rich Franklin were under consideration as the American coaches, but I needed to beat Leben in order for the concept to make sense.

  Coaching TUF was a huge opportunity for me. Being on the show as a contestant had changed my life. I really wanted to return in the mentor role; it would be months of great exposure on television on both sides of the Atlantic and a chance to help other British fighters get to the UFC.

  The pressure to beat Leben increased again when the UFC advertised open auditions for British fighters – lightweights (155lb) and welterweights. Everyone on the forums and websites put two and two together: a British team would need a British coach. And so began the bombardment of questions regarding my involvement.

  ‘I know about as much as you do,’ I answered. ‘I’d love to do it, if the UFC ask me, but I have Chris Leben to focus on right now.’

  The other question I began to get over and over was, ‘When are you going to fight for the title?’ Many of the media people putting me on the spot were used to covering boxing, where one or two wins over American opposition was considered enough to get a shot at a belt. I had to explain to them, while trying not to sound like I didn’t have confidence in myself, that, unlike in boxing, the UFC had only one middleweight championship, not four or five, and I still had work to do before I got my shot.

  Speaking at the time, I said, ‘One of the toughest parts of my career is other people’s expectations. I already put a ton of pressure on myself – this is how I provide for my family, after all – but on top of that there’s people pressuring me to call out the champion, Anderson Silva.

  ‘I just want to earn the right to fight for the belt. I’m not here to make up the numbers, I’m here to become the champion of the world. Of course, I want to fight for the belt more than anything; I want to fight the best of the best. But I don’t want to sound arrogant and call anyone out. I want it to be obvious I am next in line for the belt and whenever the UFC gives me the chance, I’ll be ready to win that belt. So I’m not watching Anderson Silva that closely right now – all my attention has to be on Chris Leben.’

  In fact, I was watching Anderson very closely. Live at 6am UK time or not, I never missed one of the Spider’s fights live. The greatest fighter in the world was the champ of my division. He’d come from Cage Rage, like me, and we’d reached UFC level at the same time. I was doing well, but Anderson was doing phenomenally well, winning the world title in his second UFC fight and already having defended it four times. He wasn’t just the best in the middleweight division, he was the best fighting in the sport, full stop.

  With no real option, I compartmentalised the thuggish antics of my management and got on with my job of training for a UFC fight. Quigley had been replaced by respected boxing coach Mark Kinney, who I happily credit with helping me tighten my striking and footwork during the time I worked with him.

  The Leben fight came soon enough. I spent the Monday of fight week doing PR in Manchester and Birmingham while Leben, who’d smartly flown from the US early to give his body every chance to shake any jetlag, did interviews in London.

  We both checked into the host hotel on the Tuesday, where more media commitments awaited us as headliners. Kevin Iole, in Birmingham to cover another UFC for Yahoo! Sports, began his one-on-one interview with me with: ‘Have you seen Chris Leben yet? He’s shown up looking quite the physical specimen.’

  When I did lay eyes on Leben, I knew what Iole meant. After hearing Leben talk about me having a speed advantage over him, I’d expected him to come in leaner, and with an expanded gas tank.

  Instead, he’d shown up with the upper body of a rhinoceros. I got a real good look at him when we found ourselves riding the same tiny elevator in the hotel. The muscles along his neck, shoulders, biceps and chest had been built out so far his sponsored T-shirt creaked like the deck of a galleon.

  Leben was a fan favourite for two reasons: his ‘don’t give a fuck’ approach to life and his fighting style. Actually, those reasons were probably one and the same. He’d only been stopped once – by some bloke called Anderson Silva – and had since re-established himself with two Knockout of the Night performances. His intentions at UFC 89 weren’t exactly a secret.

  ‘My style is a little loopy, a little wild, but – guess what? – that style knocked people out,’ he said at the pre-fight press conference. ‘I put guys to sleep. Bisping hasn’t fought a striker of my calibre. There’s no one out there I can’t knock out and until the referee raises your hand – you’re not done fighting me. When I take him into the deep water of the fight, he’ll lose.’

  Despite the swollen muscles under his tattooed skin, Leben’s strength wasn’t massively out of the ordinary, not to a guy who’d grappled with light heavies like Matt Hamill the year before. And while I gave Leben full respect and definitely felt his southpaw left hands and hooks when they landed, Rashad’s power had given me more to worry about. (In fact, at UFC 88 the month before, Rashad had blitzed Chuck Liddell – sparked the legendary ‘Ice Man’ out cold – to earn a UFC light heavyweight title shot that he’d also win via knockout.)

  Leben fought a great fight, though. He started off by throwing a lot of leg kicks, trying to moderate my speed and footwork advantages, and marched forward throwing his short, thick arms like they were wooden baseball bats. I landed with right hands, jabs and hooks as Leben shelved his leg-kick strategy.

  On commentary, Rogan accurately relayed my game-plan to the viewers around the world: ‘Bisping is using Leben’s own aggression against him. He’s moving back and countering, relying on the fact that Leben is always going to come forward.’

  My punches were straighter and faster, plus I had a five-inch reach advantage over the Crippler. The first round ended with me knocking the American back on his
heels with power punches; he went back to his corner bleeding from his nose and eyes.

  At the start of the second round, Leben seemed to have tired himself out a little throwing those kicks. His nostrils, flooded with blood, would be little help in getting oxygen to his lungs for the rest of the fight. He got a little breather as the ref called time out when he kicked me low, but after I’d recovered the pattern of the fight was established: Leben doggedly aggressive, swinging away with big punches to the face and kicks to my legs, and me timing his attacks and countering with punches and knees.

  My strikes were slicing Leben’s face up pretty badly. I was winning every minute of every round but he drew blood, too, after a right hook exploded my left earlobe. That would sting like crazy when the adrenaline of the fight wore off.

  By the time he came out for the third, Leben’s right eye was now almost completely closed. I made sure I touched gloves with him; this guy was a warrior and giving it his all.

  In the third round, I landed 30 power strikes, more than double the amount Leben found a target for, despite his best efforts. The Crippler knew he’d been beaten; he raised his hands in the air in the last few seconds to goad me into hitting him – and I responded by kicking him in the face. I’d closed the show with my most dominant round and had won all three comfortably. Two of the three judges agreed, awarding me the decision by scores of 30–27, while the third official gave Leben one round for a 29–28 scorecard.

  Chris and I had a good chat in the cage and a lot of mutual respect was expressed. Callum came into the Octagon again. He was a lot bigger than he’d been at UFC 70 and much more aware of the realities of what his dad did for a living.

  ‘Chris is tough as hell,’ I told Joe Rogan in the interview. ‘I knew he could take a punch. The fight went down how I felt it would, I needed to use footwork. I was countering, landing shots and got the decision.’