Quitters Never Win

by Michael Bisping

  Speaking of rancid pus, when the press conference began I tried to keep my emotions even but the few words I allowed myself to say were dipped in bile.

  ‘I’m a professional fighter, not an idiot in a schoolyard,’ I said. ‘This is a press conference, by the way, Jorge. These people are journalists. This is what you do when you are on the main card – but after this fight you’ll be back on the undercard, believe me.’

  Rivera was mute with stage fright.

  There were security guards at the ready for the photo-op face-off. Rivera was wearing a branded baseball cap which cast a shadow over his eyes but, stood barely two feet away, I detected a look of fear in them.

  ‘I hope you’re ready,’ I told him, loud enough for only him and a clearly nervous Marshall to hear.

  Rivera nodded slowly as the cameras flashed away. Marshall tapped me on the back and began to tell the pair of us to exit via opposite ends of the stage. But I wanted to give Rivera a clear message.

  ‘Now you’re gonna have to back that shit up!’ I told him, loudly. It felt good not to choke my feelings back – so I said it again, even louder: ‘Now you’re gonna have to back that shit up!’

  Rivera slunk away without a word.

  The 5,000 fans at the weigh-in at the arena were into our fight, I’ll give Rivera that. I hit just over 84 kilos (the 186lb maximum) and stepped off the scale. I quickly loaded my body with fluid and then stormed forward four steps to where Rivera was waiting.

  Perhaps feeling he’d been punked the day before, the Puerto Rican threw his hands up and started cursing.

  ‘Mother-fucker – bring it! Bring it! Mother-fucker!’ he said.

  ‘You’re the mother-fucker, you prick,’ I told him. ‘You’re fucking dead!’

  Dana signalled us to break it off; I turned to the fans and gave them a cheeky smile.

  Job done, I thought. The next time I see that guy I’ll be able to give him exactly what he’s been asking for. I made it the whole week without lowering myself to Team Rivera’s level. Well done, Mike!

  The fight was here. Referee Marc Goddard was giving me and Rivera final instructions in the Octagon.

  ‘When I say stop, you stop,’ he yelled over the crowd. ‘Touch up and let’s do this!’

  Rivera and I didn’t touch gloves. He backed away and I turned and stormed back to my corner. When I turned around a moment later the arena was going ballistic. I got into a fighting stance and let my body sway as the arena rumbled like an earthquake. Just 20 feet in front of me, Rivera stared from behind a high guard. His court jester was outside, hollering something.

  It felt like I waited another eternity but, finally, Goddard started the fight.

  Rivera had clearly been brainwashed by the pre-fight narrative that a) I was especially vulnerable to right crosses and b) that he possessed the best right cross in the history of the UFC.

  He threw five right-handed haymakers in the opening minute, all of which I saw coming before he’d even balled up his fist. To settle things down, I shot for a takedown. It was completed with ease. Rivera confirmed my suspicions about his limitations as a grappler; all he knew to do on the ground was deploy a vicelike grip as a defence. I let him back up and clipped him with a left hook as he climbed to his feet.

  ‘Is that all you’ve got, mother-fucker?’ Rivera began his attempts to draw me into a brawl.

  He went for three more lead right hands, all loaded with everything he had. All of ’em missed. I flicked a leg kick and a jab and took him down again. His only defence to my ground and pound was to grab hold like an aunt getting rescued by a fireman. Doing that would burn his shoulders and torch his speed of punch, I knew.

  After changing the angles on him to give his arms a proper workout, I stood up in his guard and threw a big right hand to his jaw. Then a left and another right landed hard. Now I wanted him to again use up energy. I stepped back. As he began to rise I kneed him in the forehead. The realisation of what I’d done hit me before referee Goddard jumped between us.

  Damn it!

  The knee had been illegal. Under the rules, a fighter who had any part of his body other than his feet in contact with the canvas was considered a ‘downed’ opponent. Striking a downed opponent with a knee was prohibited.

  The referee signalled he’d taken a point from me. Outside the Octagon, the wannabe was yelling obscenities. I flipped him the finger. Rivera took two of the five minutes he was allowed to recover, and the fight continued.

  He went for broke. He threw a cross that came close and a couple of left hooks. He then pumped out several one-two combos and even turned southpaw. He stuffed one takedown attempt but I took him down on the second. He only had muscle on the ground; muscles that I could feel becoming swollen and weakened. I repeated the game-plan – ground and pound, make him get up, and pounce. I landed three very solid shots to the head which took a lot out of him. Again he went for a series of right crosses, but he was button-bashing now.

  The round ended and Rivera and I exchanged words as we crossed paths back to our respective corners. He knew what I knew, though. After all his taunts and boasts, he’d realised far too late that, yes, I was an elite mixed martial artist.

  My corner had seen exactly what I’d detected up close. ‘More combinations,’ they said. ‘Don’t let him catch his breath.’

  Round two began – and Rivera finally landed the right hand he’d been looking for. A ringing sound erupted in my left ear and I needed to put my hand down on the canvas for a split second. Thinking I was hurt, Jorge charged after me, but I dodged his two right hands, tied him up and pressed him against the fence before extinguishing his ambitions with a knee to the body.

  Even when I stepped back, Rivera seemed reluctant to follow me away from the fence. It took a second to realise it but, barely 40 seconds into the second round, he was hurt and out of ideas. Just to make sure, I stabbed him with an inside leg kick. Then I used a lead right cross and a jab. He was gasping for oxygen. I could see him pulling his lips back around his mouthpiece and dragging breath back.

  This was it, I knew. I sat down on my shots. A left hook to the head buzzed him. A right cross staggered him. The end was near. I planted my feet like the roots of an oak and drove my gloves into Rivera. Then my knees. Then an uppercut. A hook. Another right cross.

  After dropping to one knee, Rivera covered his face with his palms; and not like a professional fighter biding his time behind a defence. He was like someone’s sister watching a horror film. He couldn’t have seen the final three punches coming and was still covering his eyes in surrender as the referee waved it off.

  ‘Go home, loser,’ I told him.

  The wannabe boxing coach leapt up on the apron of the Octagon. His face was contorted, his finger pointing like a gun and he was still screaming obscenities like he’d been all week. I’d fucking had it with this prick.

  The euphoria of winning and the adrenaline of the fight overthrew my better judgement and I stormed towards the fence to get closer to him. He screamed some more at me, clearly threats and bullshit. I began to shout back at him, but there was no way he’d hear me. So I spat on the ground between us, the ultimate show of disrespect. Within moments my temper had evaporated and I regretted it.

  Real contempt isn’t often seen in sports. The pantomime put-downs of the press conferences are shrugged off as ‘hyping a fight’ but, confronted with a genuine dislike between two fighters, some sports writers pretended it was beyond the pale.

  I had to talk about the fight over and over at the time, but one thing I want to make very clear now – I didn’t intentionally knee Rivera illegally. I was winning every second of the fight. Why would I purposely hand him a point on the scorecards and give him up to five minutes’ rest? No, I intended to knee him in the face – as hard as humanly possible – legally.

  These were my actions in the heat of the moment. They followed me around for a long time afterwards. I regret how I acted after the fight, that’s not how an athlete sh
ould conduct himself. But, I have to be honest, mostly I hate the fact I let those arseholes wind me up so much.

  The Rivera fallout caricatured me as a ‘brash British bad boy’ in the United States, seemingly forever. The US media reacted like we’d reached the End Times or something, rather than one fighter letting himself down for a few moments. ESPN – who would hire me as an analyst a decade later – replayed my flying saliva more than any flying knee in the history of their UFC coverage.

  ‘We’ll have to see what the UFC wants to do with Michael Bisping now,’ one hand-wringing broadcaster signed off.

  The UFC knew exactly what to do with me. Same thing they’d done the last time I’d become a public enemy in the United States – they capitalised by having me coach The Ultimate Fighter again.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ANY TIME, ANY PLACE

  If the theme of TUF 9 was patriotism then the theme of TUF 14 was aggravation.

  The whole premise behind the UFC’s casting of Jason ‘Mayhem’ Miller as the other coach, I knew damn well, was that Miller would annoy the hell out of me. The UFC newcomer had already caused a literal riot on live television during his run in the Strikeforce organisation. ‘Let Miller wind Bisping up – it’ll be great TV’ – I knew that was the whole idea.

  Now, I want to be a little careful with my words here, because since we did the show together and fought, it’s become obvious that Jason Miller is not entirely well mental-health wise. He’s been arrested half a dozen times for crazy things like smashing up a tattoo parlour, breaking into a church naked and picking fights with random police officers. There was an incident where he live-tweeted a day-long stand-off with armed police. By the time you read this it’s possible Miller will have been sentenced to prison for a long time.

  There’s no way to avoid saying it, though. Mayhem Miller annoyed the hell out of me. He had all the charm of a burning dog-rescue shelter. He was just awful, and I so badly wanted to punch him in the face by the end of filming.

  Coaching TUF for the second time was fun. I was a much more relaxed guy than I’d been just two and a half years before. Also, I was coaching a mixed group of Americans, Europeans and a Brazilian. I wanted my guys to win just as much as I had during TUF 9 but, of course, I’d had a different kind of relationship with the British team.

  I also had a completely different coaching staff with me. My relationship with the Liverpool gym had come to a head, again. I’d been owed sponsorship money from a supplement company who, according to everyone else they sponsored, paid on time every time. When my manager decided to base Rampage Jackson’s entire camp for his challenge to UFC light heavyweight champ Jon Jones in the same sponsor’s training facility, I pressed the issue.

  ‘Have you gone and spoken to them yet?’ I asked over the phone from Vegas.

  ‘Not really,’ was the predictable answer. ‘I’ve just been so busy here with Rampage, when he’s not training he’s doing interviews so there’s been no time for me to talk to them about your money.’

  ‘Well, you’re not training yourself, though,’ I said, having no more of this bollocks. ‘And you’re not doing the interviews. Can you please go and speak to someone then?’

  ‘You fuckin’ what? What did you fucking just say?’

  And there was that tone. The tone from UFC 85. I was so done with these people.

  I called Dana and said that I would have a different coaching staff with me this time. I brought in Tiki Ghosn, a well-connected fighter I’d become mates with, his BJJ coach Brady Fink, who would in time become one of my best friends to this day, and ‘Razor’ Rob McCullough, the former WEC lightweight champion who was a similar size to the TUF 14 contestants.

  The top featherweight on my team was a teak-tough Brazilian named Diego Brandão. He buzzsawed through the competition and, in the finale, won the TUF trophy along with Fight and Submission of the Night bonuses. Also on my team was bantamweight T.J. Dillashaw, who I knew was a massive talent. He lost the finale match to John Dodson, but went on to be UFC champion.

  With the filming done I flew home to England to be with my family. Like in a lot of families where one parent spends time away from home, the dynamic in the Bisping household is that when I get back from spending time away it is party-time for the kids. This time, though, instead of a family vacation Rebecca and I took a long weekend in Paris. It’s important in any relationship to make time just for the two adults who started the family, y’know?

  It was a warm September night in the French capital and I’d surprised Rebecca by taking her to Maxim’s, arguably the most famous restaurant in the world. There are only a dozen tables served a night and I had to strongly economically encourage the concierge to get us a table at short notice. The place was amazing; everyone from Victorian Era royalty to famous poets and playwrights to today’s celebrities have been there and I was really looking forward to spoiling Rebecca after being away from her for two months.

  Located at No.3 Rue Royale, Maxim’s has been open since 1893 and retains the over-the-top affluence of that age. It also works hard to echo the social culture of the era; my menu included prices while Rebecca’s did not. It was like a scene from a romance novel sitting there among all the gold refinery, drinking wine with the woman I love. But I was distracted.

  ‘You know what,’ I suddenly announced to my partner, ‘I’m not doing this any longer. I’m not having these people take the piss and disrespect me.’

  She knew what I was on about. ‘Your management?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I replied, and I told her about the latest phone call. ‘I’m not going to put up with these people any more. The contract I signed – the one I never got a copy of – it’s up now and I won’t be signing another one.’

  With that off my chest, me and Rebecca had an amazing experience at Maxim’s. The waiters came around and performed tap-dances wearing turn-of-the-century clothing and hats, the old movie-blonde lighting made the oil paintings blend in the walls – it was like stepping back in time.

  And then we came crashing back to the twenty-first century, when they gave us a bill that, if cashed in 1893, would have bought half the street.

  When I got back to England a few days later I sat at my computer and typed out an email to the Liverpool gym. I was professional, polite and thanked them for everything they’d done over the years, but made it clear that I was moving on.

  ‘Babe, let’s just book the flights and go,’ I said.

  Rebecca looked up from the living-room couch where she was reading on her iPad. She knew exactly what I meant.

  ‘Really, Michael? You sure this time? Because we’ve talked ages already …’

  Yeah, I was sure. We were going to move to America. Australia had been on the cards for a while, but in the end I realised I would still need to go to the US to get the level of training and sparring I needed. I had a lot of friends and contacts in California. Plus, Rebecca’s parents had moved to the Far East, most of her friends had moved away, and I was gone for weeks on end throughout the year. She wanted to move somewhere warm. Plus, I was breaking into television work and had landed a few parts in action movies. Plus, we’d had a vacation in Orange County and the kids loved it there. Everything just lined up and pointed to making this move.

  ‘We’ve got the works visa,’ I reminded my partner. ‘There’s nothing stopping us. Let’s not keep talking about it – we’ve talked about it for a year now. If we’re not going, let’s stop talking about it. Let’s go – try it – and if we don’t like it, guess what? Planes fly both ways over the Atlantic, and we’ll come home.’

  Rebecca began bashing away at her iPad and, there and then, booked a flight for five days later. Just like that, the Bispings were moving to Orange County, California. We packed up clothes and things we could carry and were in a rented house in no time. We left for the airport in a taxi, leaving the Mercedes E-Class in the drive.

  We left it to my dad to send over our stuff from our old house in the UK.

&n
bsp; ‘Right, Dad, I’ve gone through the house,’ I’d told him. ‘There are Post-it notes on every piece of furniture in the entire gaff. Follow the instructions on those Post-it notes carefully – some of the stuff, like the big table, we want to have in America. But most of it you can either sell or, if you can’t, give or throw away.’

  What did my old man do? He sent everything with a Post-it note on to us. Yep, even the stuff clearly marked ‘THROW AWAY’.

  My ex-manager continued to reach out, but now in a less aggressive manner. I agreed to meet him while I was in Las Vegas for a few days. The irony that he’d finally met up with me at the Palace Station, five Decembers after he was supposed to have for UFC 66, didn’t escape me.

  We sat down at the café and he was apologising before his arse hit the seat.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mike, I was just so stressed with Rampage’s camp,’ he began. ‘I’ll never speak to yers like that again.’

  He’s a charming, charismatic guy, I’ll give him that. Against my better judgement, I listened to what he said and agreed – on a trial basis and at a significantly reduced percentage – for him to represent me.

  The fight with Miller was scheduled for the TUF Finale itself, 3 December 2011, at the Palms Casino in Las Vegas. The set up was similar to the last time I’d appeared on a TUF Finale, a decade ago.

  Putting the fight on the Spike TV cable channel was a going-away present from the UFC, who had signed a new seven-year massive-dollar deal with Fox Sports beginning in 2012.

  Remember what happened with my manager no-showing at UFC 66? Same thing with the Mayhem Miller fight.

  ‘We’ll be there the week before the fight … week of the fight … tomorrow … no, tomorrow … for the weigh-in … for the fight,’ and then a no-show.