When Jason Parillo clocked Le in the hotel lobby four nights before the fight he walked straight up to him and said, ‘You are looking very vascular, Cung. Trained hard for this?’
If my opponent’s head coach had flat-out accused me of doping, I’d have told him to fuck right off. Cung didn’t do that.
Here’s what I said about the now-infamous picture when asked at the UFC press conference three days before the fight.
‘It’s funny how Cung’s genetics have finally kicked in now he’s forty-two,’ I told reporter John Morgan. ‘He’s trained hard his entire life, but he’s never had a physique like he’s got now. Now, maybe he’s just really applied himself like never before. I hope he has. I hope that’s the case because if he pisses hot on Saturday night, that throws the whole fight into disrepute.’
Morgan, seemingly present at every MMA event in the world, asked his follow-up question: ‘Does it give you pause, though? Given your track record with guys you fought on—’
‘I would love to do a blood test Saturday night,’ I answered quickly. ‘A urine sample isn’t enough for me. I would happily do a blood test and a urine sample.’
Morgan walked across the thick carpet of the function room and relayed my comments to Le. They say only a guilty man runs when no one chases, and Le’s rambling three-and-a-half-minute answer did nothing to abate what had become a full-on PR nightmare for the previously well-respected fighter.
Here’s just some of the explanations that came rambling out of his mouth: when the picture was taken, he’d just lost ‘six-and-a-half pounds’ in a ‘hard-ass workout’, the picture was taken in ‘perfect light’, he’d always been veiny (y’know, apart from the entirety of his MMA career, where he’d always been borderline soft), back in his younger days he used to ‘eat fries with double cheeseburgers’ – ‘triple cheeseburgers’, even! – before his training sessions, but now, over two decades into his competitive martial arts career, he’d finally bothered to figure out a proper diet … he was now finally injury-free and able to train hard … etc., etc.
At no point in this barrage of bullshit did Cung Le deny taking performance enhancers.
It’s just not in my nature – or any real fighter’s nature – to pull out of a fight purely on the suspicion that an opponent is doping. Whatever it is in our brains that allows us to fight in cages for a living in the first place doesn’t switch off when the word ‘steroid’ is mentioned. I thought I could beat Cung Le, on steroids, on HGH, on Captain America’s Super Serum – whatever he liked.
That said, after losing a world-title shot to Dan Henderson (who’d since been outed as the OG of TRT in the sport), Wanderlei Silva (who the Nevada Athletic Commission wanted to ban for life for literally running away from a random drug test) and Chael Sonnen (since banned for two years for multiple failed tests) and almost losing an eye to Vitor Belfort (biggest cheating scumbag ever), I was done with tiptoeing away from this issue.
I found Dana White and said I wanted to be tested ‘to the max’ along with Cung Le.
‘Not just a post-fight urine sample, Dana,’ I said. ‘Pre-fight and post-fight, blood and urine. You can literally test the piss out of me – I’m clean.’
I let the implication hang in the air for him to pick up.
‘Good news for Michael Bisping,’ Ariel Helwani reported on Fox Sport’s UFC Tonight TV show in the US an hour later. ‘I spoke with UFC president Dana White from Macau and he told me that Cung Le and Michael Bisping will be subjected to enhanced drug testing. Blood and urine testing after the fight.’
Whether or not Le was running on Super Unleaded or not, I put it out of my mind. This fight was about me, not him.
The words I recorded for the UFC’s opening promo were:
I’m not finished. I ain’t going nowhere. I still want to be the world champion. While there’s still life in my body, that’s what I will try and achieve. There’s a lot at stake in this fight for me. My back is against the wall, I know that. I’ve got to prove I’m still the fighter that I’ve been proclaimed to be. I need to go out there and finish Cung Le.
My performance against Cung Le in Macau on 23 August 2014 was one of the best of my entire career. Although Le had been a collegiate wrestler, his MMA style was almost entirely strike-based; without having to split my focus on defending potential takedowns, I was able to use the full compass of my own striking ability.
From the moment the fight started, it was all about pressure. I went out there to absolutely destroy Le. He started off confidently, marching forward while throwing out some of the tricks he was famous for. He went for a spinning back fist, he landed a hard right hand to the body, he threw back fists. But I found my rhythm quickly and it was my spinning heel kick that landed halfway through the first round.
Le had broken Frank Shamrock’s forearm clean through when the former UFC light heavyweight champion blocked one during their 2008 fight. They were powerful kicks and I fired combinations as soon as Le was in range to discourage them. Le landed the same right hook that knocked out Rich Franklin in his last fight, which got my attention, but I soon landed a hook of my own to underline that I’d won the first round.
I began to open up a lead in the second. I read Le’s attacks like a book and began to walk him down, throwing and landing far more kicks than in my recent fights. A right cross raised a huge welt around Le’s right eye and he began to look distressed. I hit him again in the eye, and the bruise was burst open. Then I cut him with a hook and right cross to the left eye. Then I ripped his bottom lip apart. From then on, Le fought covered, brow to beltline, in his own blood.
‘Cung Le is a mess,’ understated commentator Kenny Florian.
The referee called the doctor in to check Le could see. He could, but he was insisting – incorrectly, as confirmed by replays – that I’d poked him in the eyes.
Le continued to fire his heavy artillery. A spinning back fist into a roundhouse kick; a hook kick chased me back to range after I landed an uppercut. I landed another lead right cross to the face and Le’s blood literally splattered on my forearm. I was two rounds up, dominating.
There was no poker face on Le in the third. His features were slippery with blood and, behind the red, black bruises were contorting his face even more. He couldn’t hide the pain he was in – but he wasn’t beaten yet. His corner had instructed him to fire the right hook and he did until one landed on my jaw. As I stepped back for a second, Le landed a spinning heel kick to my stomach. I had to take in some deep breaths because that one really hurt. I returned fire with a shin to the ribs; Le answered that with one of his own. I closed the distance and dug a three-punch combination into Le.
We were putting on a true mixed martial arts contest in front of 7,022 smartly attired Asian fans at the Cotai Arena. China is in many ways the birthplace of martial arts and I was in a real-life Bloodsport or Big Boss movie.
I hurt the former Strikeforce middleweight champion with a right hook in the last 90 seconds of the third. His legs shuddered for the first time.
The fight was mine to lose going into the fourth. Le’s face looked like the front cover of a horror movie Blu-Ray. I’d swept the first three rounds and could certainly have made the calculation to play the percentages all the way to a clear points decision. But I’d not flown all that way to win via the scorecards.
A left kick to the temple bounced off Le. Then a jab stabbed at his now entirely closed right eye. An uppercut rocked him back on his heels and I sensed my siege of Cung Le had entered its final stage. I’d pushed him back to his last line. He was cornered, desperate; out of ammo and ideas. The aggression had drained from his eyes. He was pushing out strikes as pleas to leave him alone and let him rest. Another left shin to the head signalled a sustained attack of 15 punches – all of them with vicious intentions – and then a knee to the jaw sent him careering backwards half-unconscious. Referee John Sharp called it off 57 seconds into the fourth.
It was 4 months since the boring 25 minute
s with Tim Kennedy, 6 months since I was told I could fight again, 11 months since my first eye surgery and 20 months since my retina was torn vs Belfort … but I was back! I’d put on an exciting and dominant performance when I needed to the most. The Kennedy fight was an aberration, everyone could see that now, it was the result of rushing back after a long lay-off. The real Michael Bisping was back.
‘This is what I’m capable of,’ I told Kenny Florian in the post-fight interview. ‘Believe me, I am capable of better. I want to be world champion – I have the tools to do it. But I’ve got to back it up – this was the start of backing it up.’
Knocking out Cung Le was my 15th win in the Octagon. No other fighter in the history of the UFC had won so much without getting a title shot.
There’s no better platform a UFC fighter is afforded than those few moments after a big win, that’s when you are able to craft your own narrative, when you can’t be misquoted and you have everyone’s full attention. I knew what I needed to do.
‘There’s an idiot called Luke Rockhold who can’t stop talking about me – I think he’s got the hots for me, to be honest – Rockhold called me out. You want it? Let’s dance. I’ll beat Luke Rockhold and then I’ll take the title.’
I knew Le’s pal Rockhold, the last man to hold the Strikeforce title, was in the front row. He’d been calling me out for a couple of years and, I knew, a fight with the UFC’s answer to a Ken doll would land me right back in the top three.
My dad came to all but two of my professional fights. He couldn’t make UFC 66 or UFC 127 – he was at every single one of the rest. It’s one thing to tirelessly travel up and down the British motorways, and another to fly from England to North American a dozen times, to Australia and China twice and Brazil, especially when you’re as tall as my father is.
My dad’s best mate – Mick Warburton, aka ‘Little Mick’ – travelled with him to most of my fights.
The morning after I beat Cung Le, my dad, Little Mick and I were enjoying an awesome breakfast of eggs, turkey and apple sausage, toast, mushroom and tomato sauce (because that’s what Englishmen eat for breakfast when they travel to China) in the hotel when we were interrupted.
‘I’m going to beat the fuck out of you!’
There was Luke Rockhold.
‘I’m going to destroy you. You want to fight me? I’ll fucking retire you!’ he raged, attracting whispers and worried looks from a restaurant full of the sort of people who wear dress shirts to breakfast.
‘What are you doing, Luke, you idiot? I’m having a quiet coffee here with my dad and mate,’ I explained. ‘I don’t fight in restaurants, and you shouldn’t promote a fight when there’s no one else around. Stop making an exhibition of yourself, you knob, and I’ll see you soon enough.’
The match was set for 8 November 2014, at the same arena in the outskirts of Sydney, Australia, where I’d faced Wanderlei Silva and Jorge Rivera.
The genesis of the feud with Rockhold began two years earlier, when I appeared on a TV show called MMA Uncensored Live and was asked about the Strikeforce middleweights being absorbed into the UFC. Should Luke Rockhold, the Strikeforce champion, for example, be automatically installed as the next contender for the UFC belt?
Jason Parillo had brought Luke to the RVCA gym a few months earlier to spar and, put on the spot and looking to entertain, I said, ‘Let me put it like this: I’ve sparred with Luke Rockhold recently and let’s just say I’m the unofficial Strikeforce champion. Sorry, Luke!’
Now, me going on cable TV and bragging about kicking his arse probably wasn’t the thank-you Luke was expecting when he did me a favour and came and sparred with me. But it was a joke, another joke in an interview that had been light-hearted and irreverent all the way through.
Rockhold took himself way too seriously to get over it. He dropped my name for the next two years and, finally, the fight happened at UFC Fight Night: Rockhold vs Bisping.
Almost every day – literally, not kidding, every single day – I’d have at least a few minutes spent worrying that my vision had dipped just 1 per cent below 20/200. The days leading up to an eye exam were almost unbearably anxious. My right eye had 20/200 vision on its best day; there was no margin for having tired eyes.
If I’d stayed up late watching the end of a movie, or if I had a bit of a head cold, or showed up on the day of the eye exam with a shiner – who knows?
As well as fretting about my eyesight declining on its own – I was now wearing glasses to watch TV at night – I fretted that some random doctor at a weigh-in would take one look at my right eye and consider his Hippocratic Oath demanded erring on the side of not sending a man with one good eye into a cage fight.
Worrying about an impromptu eye exam and having my licence to fight withdrawn – and potentially my whole career ended – became the opponent I faced every day in the gym and every second of fight week.
My anxiety in Sydney was through the roof. Just two days before I left for Australia – flying the 15 hours from LA and not the 23 hours from Manchester this time – I was cut on my good eye in sparring. I needed six stitches to close up the three-quarter-inch slice at the top of my eyelid.
‘Mike, if you lose this fight, that’s it, right? If you don’t win this one then you’ll never get another No.1 contender fight again, so it is fair to say your career is on the line here?’
‘No,’ I answered in a one-on-one interview after the press conference. ‘I won’t lose this fight but, even if I did, I am not going anywhere until I get my world title shot. Fair enough, if I lose to Luke, I will drop down the rankings again, but I’ll dust myself off and try again.’
Tall with dark features, Luke Rockhold had been blessed with the good looks of a supermodel and half the brain power. He was also enormous for a middleweight, had a powerful kick and punch and was very good at submissions. He was the best opponent I’d faced in a long time and the sports books had me as a 2/1 underdog.
I arrived at the arena, now called the Allphones not the Acer, and was ambushed by two frantic UFC staff. ‘The commission doctor needs to see you immediately,’ they said.
Oh, shit. ‘Why?’
‘Because of your eye.’
Shit, this is it. The moment I’ve been dreading.
In fact, the Aussie doctor needed to take my stitches out. I don’t know why I thought it would be okay to fight with medical sutures, but at least I got the benefit of them right up until a couple hours before the fight.
It wasn’t long enough. Barely 90 seconds into the fight Rockhold ducked down and his head collided with my face, re-tearing the sore flesh above my right eye. Referee Herb Dean saw the head clash and brought in the same doctor who’d removed my stitches earlier to check the cut out. The fight resumed, but I knew I was in trouble.
Blood was running directly into my left eye. Every time I blinked it was like using car windscreen wipers on mud. I tried using my fingers and gloves to clear my eyes, but nothing restored the vision in my good eye.
If you watch the fight back, it is obvious I couldn’t really see. I’m trying to con Rockhold into staying away – firing kicks and punches into his general direction. It was like a video game: if I managed to blink 10 or 12 times I’d get a few moments of sight and be able to throw a one-two or block one of Luke’s nasty kicks effectively. Then a red curtain would roll down the world and I’d be back to seeing lights and shapes again.
My corner did what they could between the first and second round but the whole thing was doomed. A minute into the fight resuming, Rockhold landed a whip kick to the left side of my face I barely saw coming and then he brought up a baseball bat of a left shin to the right side of my head that I didn’t see at all. He landed a big right on the ground and pound. As I scrambled to get up, he clinched in a guillotine choke to win the fight.
Other than congratulate Rockhold and affirm the obvious – yes, the cut did affect me – I couldn’t say too much more. I needed to avoid any talk of why blood in one eye changed the
complexion of the fight before it’d even begun.
I had to. Because, just like I told that reporter earlier in the week, I had every intention of dusting myself off and trying again.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SILVA BULLET
When people say Anderson ‘The Spider’ Silva is the greatest pound-for-pound fighter in the history of the UFC, they are just reading a label that’s been attached to the Brazilian since 2006. The term ‘P4P’ and even his statistics – record longest title reign in UFC history (2,457 days), record longest winning streak in UFC history (16), record number of knockdowns in UFC history (17) and on and on – don’t really describe how good a fighter he was.
At his best – and his best could be summoned at a moment’s notice – he was as good in our sport as Pelé or Ali were in theirs.
In speed, power, timing, the ability to take a punch, Silva was more than an equal for anybody in the middleweight division; but it was in the less obvious attributes that Anderson held all the X-factors. He had the timing of an orchestra conductor, sat-nav-like precision and uncanny spatial awareness in avoiding attacks. And in terms of imagination – using techniques on the biggest stage that most fighters would be apprehensive to attempt behind closed gym doors – there was no one like him.
Only those of us who’ve swapped talent and bad intentions with him can really explain how outstanding a prizefighter Silva really was. And we don’t do it with words. Rich Franklin’s misshapen nose, Chael Sonnen’s crushed ego, Forrest Griffin’s shattered pride and the zagged scar on the bridge of my nose tell you the story.
The first time I became aware of this slender, almost skinny, Brazilian who preferred to strike was during his four-fight run in Cage Rage. My Cage Rage debut came at Cage Rage 7, while Anderson’s came at Cage Rage 8. Two years later we graduated to the UFC on two different Las Vegas cards during the same week; while I won the TUF 3 tournament, Silva annihilated Chris Leben in 49 seconds.
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